well, good news, i have just recently aquired a job, and therefore, will be able to carry my project out with relativley no hinderances unless i cant do some part of the rover
i start monday in training and get my first pay on wed. 
so, it wont be long before i will be able to finsih my rover :D:D:D:D:D
Can’t wait
Nice 8)
Hey guys, good news, i finally have the money i need to finish the rover, on saturday i will be filling up my Simon Mall Visa and order the stuff then
my order is going to include a whole bunch of stuff, tracks, track sprockets, track idlers and some pico switches 
i have also decided to equip my rover with some LEDs (thats wat the picos are for) i wil have 2 light towers monted on pan and tilts, or maybe just 1 on a 4-5 DOF arm, i will also have 2 LED lines on the undercarraidge of the trover…well, mounted just below the corner of the rover, these wil be able to swivel up and down with a servo, so in total i will have 1 tower at the font as well as a row of LEDs and vise versa at the back
i have discussed this with robodude and i decided to have 15 18,000 mcd LEDs per LED bunch, so that comes to 60 LEDs in total which he thinks is too much 
i found agood deal for the LEDs for 65 cents each
i will need al this light for exploring, btw, i am looking someone to design some PCBs that could hold all these LEDs, PM me if u would be able to do this for me
i plan on adding a camera later and will add Infrared LEDs so i can be sneaky in the dark and see with the camera, rather than light the are up and scare things away with the 60 LEDs in the area that im exploring
thats its, see ya after school
I want to see some pics. 
sounds cool! Im designing some PCB’s to hold my LED’s. pretty neat project.
I will get the pictures up as soon as its built , i need to go get the aluminum still, but i might just get enough to mount on the top and sides for right now, and i will finalize it later when i get further paychecks
ok, i got the money for all the tracks and stuff finally! exhausted sigh i wil be ordering the stuff finally on monday, after i get out of school
aslo, i have been working on some PCB schematics to simply allow me to spread the power out and add switch to the many things in the rover, heres an overall schematic, no detail with the other PCBs
img2.putfile.com/thumb/6/15913425025.jpg
let me know wat u think, ill post some little drawings of the LED PCB and fan PCB later , btw, while spreading out the power, do i need any type of device to keep the voltage from dropping a significant amount? from the first switch of the Saber tooth, to the last switch of the Fan PCB?
you could use a voltage regulator board. Id suggest making your own to suite your power hungry needs 
well, i dont need to reulate any voltage, i just dont want it to drop over the coruse of going to the 3 different boards it will be supplying, maybe some caps? idk tough, advice would be great 
, i also plan to run the pan and tilts right from the VEX board for right now, i just want to get a base platform up and running, then i can get more complicated later
ah, now I see what you mean. Alright, Caps may help.
…so, anyone wish to lend a hand? or should i seek help elsewhere? 
It is less than clear what kind of help you are looking for, even less how one would lend a hand.
If you are making a power interface PCB and it will be handling the motor currents then you need to make sure you choose connectors/headers that accept 16-18 AWG wire. Next make certain the trace widths on your PCB are heavy enough to carry the currents without introducing appreciable voltage drops under load, or in the extreme case heating up enough that they become a fusable link.
Now, if you are going through the effort of making a PCB then why are you buying pico switches instead of just putting a comparable circuit on your PCB? Hmmm? A circuit to drive a relay on pulses above (or below) a certain time theshold is called a missing pulse detector and is built from a re-triggerable one-shot with a timeout set to the threshold time. A CD4538 has two such devices, basically you trigger it from the servo ouput and take it’s Q output to drive an NPN or N-ch MOSFET transistor which drives the relay coil. That entire level of complications assumes you can’t just drive the N-ch MOSFET directly from a digital output from the vex, ABB, or SSC-32 to begin with.
Similarly why are you using manual switches to turn on your fans instead of just using a N-ch. MOSFET? driven from a digital output from the vex, abb, or ssc-32?
Lastly, do you “need” an SSC-32 for this design? You can easily drive all of your servo and digital outputs from the ABB+BAP using the hservo commands. Or are you just designing a generic power distribution PCB and want to have connections for each of the possible configurations of controller boards?
I suggest you ask electronic questions in the electronic group as this has nothing to do with the frames. Your question might go unnoticed by those with no interest in the “frame” thread.
I read everything.
me too! 
ok, sorry about this guys ^^’, i will try and draw a thing up for you to explain better, and i would like to use the PICO switch for convinence
also, keep in mind im only 16 and have a lot to learn about all thiese different circuits and switches eddie…
manual switches are to be able to turn them on and off myself, before i start with the rover, im not sure if i would want to allow that, but then again, i didn’t think of it as, again, im young and not as knowledgable as some of the more advanced users here
and yes, thats wat i want to do, i want to be able to plug in any of my boards, so thats if i decide to add something big onto it later, i would be able to just plug the SSC-32 right in and go, rather then fumble around and make a sloppy mess with it.
now that u mention it eddie, i think it would be better to use a MOSFET to control the thngs on my board, i would still like a manual switch to just shut everything down though if something ever went wrong
That 3 years past me!!
lol, and i’ve only been in robotics for a year, and keep in mind, highschool, all honors classes and sports to balance 
, im moving slowly but steadily
and on top of that, now i have a job to balance too, thankfully though, schools out as of this wednesday, i need a break
Join the club! Space Junk, you seem to know more than me about robotics and your three years younger!
whats up with those brass wheels you molded? I sure would like to know how you did that…sory bout the thread jacking 
