This is team 810’s control box built in 2014 and still in use today. inside it has a powerstrip for charging the laptop (and phone if you wanted), and it powers the LED’s (Red/Blue). It’s made out of aluminum and smoke plexiglass. also features handles cut into the plexiglass. The button board is a piece of metal that can be changed throughout the years, but the main board with joysticks and laptop is meant to be permanent.
What do your guys control boxes look like?
I don’t have a picture of ours on hand, but we always come up with innovative control systems. We have made HUDs before (first team to my knowledge) and wearable controls for an armature (a device measured the position of your arm joints and mirrored that on the robot). In previous years, our control panel would be a large wooden box with the bottom longer on one side. The joysticks would sit on the extended bottom and the laptop and buttons would sit on the box. The box allowed for space for electronics and storage in the control panel. It even featured an extended battery charger for a laptop one year using an FRC battery and DC/AC converter. Eventually, as our laptop grew, our control panel got enormously large (more than 4 ft long) and heavy (needed 2 people to carry when not on wheels).
To remedy this problem, this year we completely changed our control system. We went with a much more modular system that was stored in two briefcases. One briefcase permanently holds the laptop, velcroed in with holes in the sides for the ports. The other briefcase holds our two joysticks and button box (a project box with a microcontroller and buttons to control the robot). This briefcase’s hinges separated and the top had Velcro to attach the two joysticks so they wouldn’t slide around. As the second driver, it was my job to set up the control panel. When I got to the driver station, I would open and unhinge the briefcases, secure the joysticks to the top of the joystick briefcase, sit the laptop briefcase on top of the joystick briefcase to raise it up, and plug in the joystick USB, button box USB, and Ethernet cable. Overall setup took about 2 minutes and breakdown took about 1. Our whole drive team wore black dress shirts and yellow ties to match the business theme of our driver station and our team colors, and we got a lot of compliments for our look. One judge even stopped me to take my picture with the control panel. The briefcases also added an extra layer of security in that they locked and only approved members know the combination to unlock them and drive the robot.