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Welcome to the UT RAS RoboMaster Hardware repository!

Getting Started

1. Download KiCad 8.0. If you have an older version of KiCad installed, please also install KiCad 8.0 so we can all access the same features.
2. Download Git. Keep in mind Git and Github are different things, Git is a version control software and Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, etc. are all online hosts for Git repositories.
3. Make an account on Github if you don't already have one.
4. Message Bri or Morris (cheebri or breezyjoe on discord) your Github username, and we will send you an invite to the RoboMaster Electrical team, accept it once you get it.
5. Clone this repository in a directory you wish to keep KiCAD projects. Bri and I work using Git Bash, which is a terminal provided with Git's Windows install, but you may use any terminal/shell. On Windows I recommend keeping it in C:\Users\your-username\Documents\KiCad\8.0\projects, but you can choose where. Github's guide to cloning.

Working with KiCad

We know KiCad can be a bit of a pain at times, so we've made these slides to help you when you're stuck. If you need information on more advanced information, you can access the KiCad Documentation or Forum.

Using Bash terminal & Git

Git is version control software, and allows us to share our projects and work on them in teams. While it's intended for software development, it fits PCB development well, and we will only using a command-line interface, Git Bash on Windows or Terminal on Mac. You're free to use other command-lines, but I can only help if it uses BASH.

Please Check

Our Projects

Our team is in charge of designing 6 PCBs. They are detailed below:

(1 & 2) Chassis Board: There will be two versions, one for Standard & Hero and another for Sentry. It is in charge of passing all necessary connections up through the slip ring, and passing power & CAN to all devices on the chassis of the robot. It has two buck converters (5V & 3.3V) which allow us to get the different power levels we need for varying components.

(3 & 4) Turret Board: This will also have two versions, each use the same way as Chassis boards. This board is placed above the slip ring (in the turret) on the hero and standard robots (sentry is TBD!). It receives signals from the chassis board through the slip ring, and allows those signals to be passed to their necessary components, like the camera or flywheel motors. It will likely also contain voltage conversions for powering the Orin Nano, which is the embedded computer used to run the software team's computer vision model.

(5) Supercapacitor Bank: This board contains an array of supercapacitors, which will store energy and release it according to when the robot has excess or deficient energy from the Power Management Module, and the associated voltage conversion circuitry. The quick charge & discharge times over conventional batteries makes these suitable for rounding out these energy demands.

(6) Quick-Disconnect Boards: These boards will electrically be simple, with only connections from normal connectors/slipring to pogo pin connectors or metal contacts that they interface with. These boards will allow the turrets to be mechanically very easy to detach, avoiding having to manually disconnect every connector before mechanically detaching the turret.

(7) Slip Ring: The slip ring is how we are able to pass wires up through the spinning turret without them getting twisted around each other and being torn. Electrical connections are made internally while allowing for complete revolutions of the slip ring. Since the slip ring colors are essentially arbitrary, it is very important to keep a document on what each wire represents, which can be found here.