On-Board Battery Charger
 

In section 8, rule 54 (I believe 54, not 100% sure, but it is in the fifties) it states that FIRST will be posting a "guideline" to build a Charger for the camer'a backup battery, that will charger through the main battery. I cannot find this document posted anywhere. Does any one know where to find it?

Thanks,
Jedd

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

I believe the document you seek is located here:
http://ifirobotics.com/docs/first-backup-charger.pdf

I found it on Innovation First's website, ifirobotics.com, and it was under Robot Controller.

JBot

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

Thanks a lot! I believe this is it :)

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

Bomber,

Please do a search on this subject. You will find a number of threads dedicated to this subject.

<R56> requires that you use the IFI design if you charge the backup battery on the robot. While the IFI design states that IFI does not support this design.

Many degreed engineers have reviewed this circuit and quite a few of us have reservations about it.

Unless you know what you are doing, I would suggest sticking to off-robot charging.

JMHO.

Mike

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

Mike,

The backup battery charger schematic was changed and updated on Jan. 25th. I believe this new revision corrects the problems that existed with the original charging scheme. You may want to take a look and see if the new revision makes you electrical guys happy. :)

BEN

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

Ben,
The answer on that would still be 'NO". There is a long thread about this with some great discussion and a better design.

Re: On-Board Battery Charger
 

The revised circuit does make a lot more sense than the original one, but it still has the big problem of letting the backup battery power things connected to the main 12v supply.

I wonder if it would be legal to power the charger from a Spike output.