There is no electrical modification involved. Unmodified smart cables are passed through the center of an electrically conductive braid. The smart cables protrude out both ends of the braid and are plugged into the motor at one end and the brain at the other. The entire bundle (braid with one or more smart cables inside) is zip-tied to the metal framework both to anchor the cables and to electrically connect the braid to the structure of the robot.
If the braid was removed, the smart cables would follow the same physical path and the robot would perform in exactly the same fashion. It would simply be more vulnerable to frying ports.
The rules specify protecting cables. They do not say that protection can be only mechanical.
Did anyone figure out a way to completely secure the ports from getting static build up? Reading through this thread has shown that there is still a chance of getting the port blown out. Is there a definite answer to how to stop the static build up, other than a theory?
It is static. People can have this problem and this year when all those cubes go up a tray can cause major static and blow motors and even if its bad the whole brain.
keep your robot grounded together. that means you shouldn’t have any electronically isolated parts of your robot. this will prevent buildup of different charges in different parts of your robot. the most common example of isolated systems is your arms. if you don’t have metal connecting your arms to your base then you could have charge build up in your arms, and eventually discharge through your cables. if you give the electricity an easy way to flow between the arms and the rest of the bot, then it won’t have to go through your cables. that means have some sort of metal on metal contact between your arms and the rest of the bot.
use vex’s antistatic tiles, staticide spray, and humidifiers in your robotics room.
these options are pretty effective, because if all you do is ground your robot together, it can still build up a net charge different than the field perimeter. your electronics probably won’t get damaged by these discharges, as they don’t have to occur through cables and ports, but it can happen. this is also what usually causes whitescreening. solving the root of the static buildup also means you won’t be shooting lightning at your bot while you work on it, which is a nice benefit.
I know this discussion is a bit dead now, but @lacsap@technik3k it was determined last year in the Q&A that such braided cable protectors were legal. Of course, Q&A answers do not necessarily carry over from past years, but I see no reason for this one to change.
I would advise everyone to add some sort of electrostatic protection to their robot, unless you can be 100% certain that every field you will put it on is properly sprayed. We never had any issues with inspectors flagging conductive wire sleeve or pieces of wire electrically connecting various subsystems.
GDC, please, help to resolve confusion among competitors about the legality of various ways to protect V5 ports.
Pretending that the problem of V5 ports being vulnerable to ESD does not exist, may be what corporate lawyers would recommend, but this leaves us with the impression that VEX is not practicing proper Engineering Design Process themselves.
This is kind of ironic, since teaching adherence to the proper Engineering Design Process is one of the cornerstones of VRC and acknowledging any design problems discovered during testing and everyday use is an important step to make it successful.
So far the tiles aren’t all to effective. There is still a chance of getting a static charge, which happened to our group when I posted last. The tiles alone aren’t good enough to prevent a static charge on the cortex, you really need to spray the tiles and your robot with anti-static spray. You still don’t have a 100 percent chance of not gathering static but it is a pretty small chance from what we have found. If anyone has found differently, please say so.