My team has lately had a problem with brain ports stopping working completely randomly. We think it may possibly be because of static blowing out the ports. Does anyone have an idea what is happening? If so how can we fix it?
Thanks
you are probably correct, static will often cause ports on the brain to blow.
it’s very difficult to eliminate this problem entirely, but there are steps you can take to mitigate it:
- apply anti-static spray to your field
- use the anti-static field tiles
- try to make your robot so that every part has a clear conductive path to your base, that is to say that electricity can flow through the robot freely, through conductive metal contact.
- if you find yourself getting shocked when you touch the robot, make sure to touch close to the brain of the robot before anything else. I have no evidence that this helps, but I suspect ports are blowing when you contact something far from the brain, causing the static to surge through a cable and ports to get from the robot to you (or vice versa). discharging near the brain might reduce the chances that static has to flow a long distance, and thus reduces the chances that it takes the path through the cables and ports. I could be completely wrong about this one, but it doesn’t hurt to do it anyways.
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Most likely static blowing the ports.
Its complicated, like @Xenon27 said anti static tiles or spray for the tiles helps.
You can kinda use ESD boards Q&A answering legality of it
And reading this thread might offer some insight into generally what might be happening:
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Based on my actual testing in the thread mentioned… anti static spray and lots of it.
If the problem has come on suddenly… ask yourself what’s changed?
Bot design? Maybe add some grounding between sections.
Low humidity? Anti-static spray.
The field itself can also hold a charge. Ground it to something.
And anti-static spray. Lots of it.
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Ok, thanks for the help