Just out of curiosity is it legal to have more than one microcontroller on an FRC robot? ex: Arduino and Raspberry PI (one for LEDs one for vision). Is this even necessary?
Also, is it legal to power a microcontroller, like an Arduino, in the VRM port adjacent to the radio port but at the same voltage and amperage (ex: both 12v 2a).
Let me know,
~Walker Ward~Regarding your 2nd question
R51. The Wireless Bridge power must be supplied directly by the 12V 2A output of a CTR Electronics Voltage Regulator Module (VRM) (P/N: am-2857, 217-4245) and must be the only load connected to those terminals.
Yes on the first one, multiple is fine. We had four; a mini ITX board with a GTX 1050 Ti doing our neural network vision (and running Crysis), a Jetson TX1 doing our “classical” opencv vision, a Raspberry Pi doing communication over networktables and relaying that to a Teensy 3.2 which controlled our LEDs
Yes, it’s legal, and yes, you can power the circuits off the VRM. However, keep in mind connor.worley’s post above mine, per R51 only the radio can be powered from the 12V/2A connection. But that leaves the 12V/500mA connection open (we used ours for our LED ring light), the 5V/2A connections (we used ours for a Raspberry Pi 2) and the 5V/500mA connections (D-Link Gigabit Ethernet switch). That also doesn’t stop you from adding a second VRM if you really need another regulated 12V/2A supply line.
We had a Raspberry Pi 2 dedicated to vision and a RioDuino attached to the RoboRio MXP port to control a set of RGB LED strip lights.
Is it necessary? Maybe not, but it all depends on what you want to do and how much of it you want the RoboRio to control.