Our drive team for this year and I have been discussing possible thoughts on building a custom drive station, sort of like from what we observed teams such as 5199 and 4201 use. How would we start, and are there any resources/physical items out there we should keep our eyes on? Thanks!
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Personally, I’d find a very small or slim laptop to design your driver station around. If you have access to CnC or waterjetting you can get pretty creative with the shape and design of it.
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- Have an ethernet port extender or dongle to reduce wear on your laptop
- Put on external monitors at eye level to help your drivers see
- Invest in a good set of joysticks and, if you use a gamepad, build some sort of storage for them into the system.
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Have wheels on it, trust me, you won’t regret it
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A driver’s station with wheels?!?
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A common pattern is two sheets of machined polycarb with standoffs inbetween to create a gap. You can use velcro or double sided tape to hold dongles/chargers inside the gap. Some teams disassemble their joysticks and remove the bottom piece of plastic, mounting directly onto the top polycarb sheet instead. Mounting a small secondary monitor for a camera display is also possible. You can get creative.
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Make it as light as physically possible. This is where you spend a day on lightening patterns and half-pockets because it should last 5 years and somebody has to carry it.
Wood is usually good in this case; PC and aluminum add up faster than you’d expect.
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My freshman year we learned this lesson. It was 2016, so we decided to join the bandwagon of using a camera pole. I grew up around metal working and made the driver’s station at my grandfather’s shop out of steel. It didn’t seem too heavy at the time, but adding a laptop, a second screen as well as someone actually carrying that, it resulted in a lot of complaints. Especially in St Louis that year.
The driver’s station was used for 1 year and replaced with a wood and polycarbonate one.
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I… Don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified. 
Thx for the pics!
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My team uses a pelican vault case. We custom cut foam in the box to fit everything. Added an ethernet extender and USB hub to reduce wear on the ports. Had to cut a hole in the back of the box for ventilation for the PC so the case is no longer water proof but it is super durable and we don’t have to worry about dropping and breaking stuff.
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Got some pictures?
My team builds a new one every year (but we do use old joysticks)
Does this obstruct driver vision at all? Also how does your custom button panel work? I like what y’all did!
Doesn’t obstruct the vision at all. And our button panel is just something we bought and plugs in using USB. At one point we needed more buttons so we had two of the button panels. We also added velcro on the back lid so you can put signs on it to display some team spirit during the match through the driver station glass.
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We made something pretty similar to the AndyMark Driver Station Tray. It was pretty light and lasted fine through 3 events and multiple trips back and forth between our build space and our practice field.
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