can we, at the end of the match, after putting the trackball on the overpass and protecting it there (assuming the robot is at 2.5 meters height) till the power is off, turn the robot on just to get our mechanism down so we don’t have to carry it out of the field when its at full height?
Thanks in Advance
Steampunk 1577
Unless you have a lot of speed at tethering up, you will have to pull it down by hand, or get the robot off the field first. (Section 9)
Not so fast there. A blanket statement of “no you can’t do this” is incorrect.
Refer to Rule <T13>. At the discretion of the head ref or field manager, you can indeed power up your Robot to position it for safe/easy removal from the field. It must be done in a timely manner, using only on-board power, and not cause a delay of the field reset.
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Dave, I did clarify that you would need to be quick on the tether, did I not? (timely manner) (Also, editing now.)
Thanks for the Quick Replays.
In addition i would like to ask if we can use Switches instead of tethering in order to get it down based on robot battery?
Thanks in Advanced
Steampunk 1577
In theory, you could, but you would still have to tether the controller, as the RC wont run if it can’t see an OI, unless its team number is set to 0.
It will just sit there in disabled mode. Its a safety feature, sort of, I think.
One thing 648 did last year to lower our boom was to modify one of the wheel chair wheels to fit on the shaft of our boom motor. We used a FP to drive the arm, and extended the half inch shaft out the back of the stock gearbox. the wheel had a little hub which we slipped over the shaft, and turned the wheel to lower the boom. Our coach had the wheel on a lanyard and it was always in his posession. We also added a spring to push the wheel off once it was let go of so it was not forgotten on the robot.
Malhon
If you’re talking about using a switch to connect the motor straight to the battery and bypass all of the other circuitry, this is most definitely not allowed.
Yes, my understanding was that you meant use the rc_dig_in switches, to which the answer is sure, you can, but you still have to tether it.
last year we had a similar problem, so we had a deprecated OI with just the controller and a single joystick glued to eachother… it worked fine.
We also learned that we can successfully backdrive our wormgear motor, so if you are in a similar situation, give the arm a wiggle and then it will move with ease.
To aid in the whole “timely manner” bit, don’t bury the tether port inside the robot where it’s going to be difficult to reach. Either place the RC in an accessible location, or solder up a small extension cable for the tether port. Semi-permanently attach one end to your RC, and put the other end somewhere near the perimeter of your robot. I’m not entirely certain which pins are important and which aren’t, so your best best is to wire up all 9 pins 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. And use a decent wire gauge since it IS carrying power for the OI. Alternatively, you could simply use an extra black programming cable or get the shortest db9/serial, male-female, straight thru cable you can find at your local Electro-Fry’s CompuShack Depot.