This is kind of a weird topic and I didn’t really know what category it fit in or what to title it, so we’ll go with this for now.
I’ve kind of had some ideas kicking around in my head of different ways of connecting up the brain with a cable as sometimes it can be really difficult to get to the usb port on the side of it. Along with that I also want to connect my vision sensor up to my computer at the same time if I can even do that. So my idea is to have a usb hub inside my bot with a couple of short usb cables going to the brain and the vision sensor, essentially having them permanently wired to the hub. then I would cut the male end of the cable attached to the hub and solder on a female connector so I can plug into it. Then I would take the connector and rout it somewhere on my bot that is easy to access and I can have my bot constantly plugged in when I am troubleshooting something or trying to implement new code. And yes I know both have some form of wireless option but I would rather have it hard wired to avoid any connection issues.
What are your thoughts on this? Is this even legal to do, having a usb hub and all? and are there any other ways of doing this that are better? I’d like to get some input on this before I go about it.
Some of the parts I was thinking of getting:
USB hub
Female connectors
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In previous seasons’ Q&As it was ruled legal to use a USB extension cable to relocate the brain’s USB connection to a more convenient location and save wear on the brain’s USB port. This is an extension of that practice, I would rule it legal unless there was a Q&A or some other clarification that says otherwise.
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I would assume using it during a comp would DQ you (what a surprise I know), I do know that if you plug in the vision sensor to both the Brain and the computer, the Brain no longer sees the vision sensor as plugged in (Again VIQC Participent here, and I would test it out first, but I really don’t see it being different, getting an extra Brain, plugging the sensor in to it, plugging the sensor into your PC, and then run the code while watching what it does)
The only way I know of is to use the wireless option, and I hate it too, and you can follow this guide if you wish to - https://kb.vex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360055918272--Connecting-the-V5-Vision-Sensor-to-a-Mobile-Device
If you were to do this to troubleshoot, not at comps, I would say who is stopping you? But during comps, as @holbrook said
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Man, that’s kind of annoying because having the vision sensor utility open at the same time is really nice. Being able to see what the robot sees and if it is misreading signatures is super helpful. I do see why this might be a limitation though, it would be difficult to have a video signal going two places at once. Along with that, does wireless option work at the same time? If so that’s even more dumb…
The wireless option does work at the same time. Stupid, I know
During the match I think there’s a good case this would count as a non-functional decoration, having a cable connected to the brain with nothing on the other end doesn’t change the robot’s performance or functionality in any way.
Welp, I guess I’ll stick with wireless for now then. If they managed to get it to work with wireless I see no reason they could not have done it with wired too.
Yeah this is kind of what I assumed it might fall under, or something very similar but I just wasn’t sure. I see reasons they might want to DQ you for it but there’s also many reasons it should be fine, I’ll probably end up keeping it on for testing and just taking it off for comps just to be safe.