Upon wiring up our robot, we discovered that our power distribution panel has no connection ports for the CAN (green and yellow) wires. We are not using pneumatics.
Can we still wire the CAN to another port on the older-style power distribution panel? Thanks in advance.
miigwech
#3367 Ogichidaa Robotics
No, the old PDB (the blue one) is NOT legal for this year’s robot. You need the newer one.
R44. The one (1) ROBOT battery, a single pair of Anderson Power Products (or APP) 2-pole SB type connectors, the one (1) main 120-amp (120A) circuit breaker (Cooper Bussman P/N: CB185-120), and the one (1) CTR Electronics Power Distribution Panel (PDP, P/N: am-2856, 217-4244, 14-806880) shall be connected with 6 AWG (7 SWG or 16 mm2
) wire or larger, with no additional devices or modifications, as shown in Figure 8-8
The old PDB does not have any CAN capability. If you just have PWM, you can build a test version of your robot, but it is not competition legal.
(Emphasis mine)
The old blue PDP can only be used on practice or old robots.
It can be used with the roboRIO control system, just not in competition anymore.
Just leave the blue PDP out of any CAN chains, e.g., CAN from the roboRIO to PCMs or Talon SRX’s. A 120 Ohm resister at the end of the CAN wiring is recommended.
For an old or practice robot the CAN to PDP is not required for anything.
On a related note, what do teams do with old RoboRio-based robots that they want to keep going for demo purposes?
Our team is too young to have owned any cRio based control systems to transplant.
We could swap out the RoboRio with some other CPU board (various options have been discussed on the forums) but that’s only one piece of the control system. What about the PDP? Do you replace that with an alternate, hopefully inexpensive, breaker panel? What do you do with the PCM and VRM?
How do other teams do it?
most teams get a second or third (or fourth!) control system. even if you have cRio based hardware, most teams no longer have anyone that remembers how to use it, and it’s annoying to keep the older software around.
Our team has 4 roboRios at this point i think. one for the competition bot, one for the practice bot, one on the T-shirt cannon (I think, though that could be a cRio), and one for the demo robot from previous years.
Many thanks. We will use a 120 ohm resistor while we wait for the AndyMark order to arrive.