Rapid React slip ring?

Technical Electrical
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Hello CD,
I know my mentor is reading this lol. I am pretty interested to see if there is people who actually accomplished using a slip ring turret in Rapid React. Has anyone actually tried doing this?

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The only slip ring turret i’ve seen used in competition is 125 2017. Even then, it was only a single motor. COTS slip rings that meet the $600 cost per part limit will be very hard to come by.

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I saw a single (small) slip ring across 5 events this year - used for signal wires on a limit switch as part of a climber.

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The Slip Ring 125 used in 2017 was less than $20 on Amazon.

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The 2017 fuel is 1/2 the diameter of a 2022 cargo.

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Diameter of the slip ring was not important with that robot design

(At least the slip ring on the bottom idk if there was a different one higher up)

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I’m still working on mine. Ethernet on its own is hard, but ethernet through a slip ring is extremely difficult.

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If only we had some wireless standard for network connections we could use… :joy:

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I’ve considered everything from lasers to aircore transformers. Contacts with circular tracks won’t really work for signals as fast as ethernet, as way too many packets are dropped. I learned that the hard way.

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Team 1391, Metal Moose, on Turing uses a slipring and they said it works great for them. You could talk to them about it.

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Small diameter (<1") capsule-style contact slip rings (with circular tracks) for ethernet (both 100BaseT and 1000BaseT) are commercially available as catalog items from several vendors. (254 hasn’t used them, but they do exist.)

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In 2012 353 used a slip ring.

Only video I have of it in use.

I don’t recall fully all about it, I believe one of our sponsors was a company that sold them.

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“Slip rings containing mercury are prohibited per R203.” – This rule has been there for a number of years and is unlikely to change, so just be sure to check before ordering anything.

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I was looking at https://www.amazon.com/SENRING-Factory-Outlets-Channel-Gigabit/dp/B08NCL3SY3 for a project, haven’t tried it out though.

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While at an internship, I also did a lot of research into ethernet slip rings for passing EtherCAT through the rotary axes of a robotic arm. We actually never found a passive solution with the robustness required, instead using an optical solution from Moog. I’m extremely hesitant to recommend any electromechanical solution to this problem especially given the shock loads encountered in FRC, but I’m definitely looking for a solution myself.

edit: I did a cursory google search for the first time in a while and didn’t find a solution from a reputable brand below around $200 that claimed to support ethernet.

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Signal level slip rings are pretty inexpensive - I bought some RJ-11 ones for less than $2 each a few years ago (designed for telephone cords). Up to 30A, still not too bad - look for slip rings intended for small windmills, available for $30 - $100 depending on the number of conductors. Above 30A, expect to pay the bucks. Note that this is NOT for slip rings with a pass-through for a game piece; you will likely want to program around the game piece passing through the wires.

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