good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Hi all,

What's a good way for a team to keep its every growing collection of batteries fully charged?

Diligence in manually rotating the charger?

A circuit which electronically rotates the charger?

Something else?

Thanks,
ER

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

just keep charging batteries on their chargers and hopefully as you use up one another is fully charged.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Our solution was to create a bay so that multiple batteries could charge simultaneously.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

I hope you are not using the "alligator" clips to connect the charger. Scratches caused by that connection have a serious and deleterious effect on current flow from the battery in service.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

We have a 3 row cart, the 2 bottom rows are for getting good full charges, and the top row is equiped with chargers to "top them off". So batteries off the top of battery cart into the robot, then battery from robot to bottom, and batteries done on bottom to the top of the battery cart.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Are you talking about during a competition, or in general? You don't really need to keep the batteries totally charged for storage. They won't discharge significantly over a month or two of neglect; you just need to make sure they don't start out empty, keep them from getting too hot or cold, and charge them fully before you use them again.

At competition, just have someone responsible for wrangling batteries. As soon as one shows fully charged (hopefully using a smart charger with a simple green light), disconnect it and flag it as ready to be put to use*. Whenever a charger is available, connect it to the used battery that's been waiting the longest for a charge.

Keep a consistent rotation for matches, so you don't end up using one battery more often than others. If you find you have more chargers than you need at any time, you can go ahead and "top off" the ones that are ready for use if you want to.


* That's what the AndyMark battery flags are for. You can't use a battery without taking out the flag, so they are a great way to keep track of the charged ones. If you put only flagged batteries on a robot, and if you put in a flag only when you take the battery off the charger, you won't accidentally use an uncharged battery.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

For this season we built a battery rack which can charge up to 6 batteries at once. We have two heavy duty 3 battery marine charger when a battery is full the a light above the battery turns green. We then cap it to show it is charged.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Is that the reason why some of our older batteries barely last 10 minutes? I better tell my team. What is an alternate of charging? Instead of the alligator clips, use the big red plug thing? Do we have to modify the charger ourselves or are there ones already in production that we can just buy?

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Thanks guys! I appreciate your very informative posts.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

We just basically clipped the alligator clips on the anderson disconnect plugs and taped it up.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

This is one of those things for which you have a hard time remembering the source. I'm pretty sure it is mentioned in a presentation given by Al Sk. for the 2009 conference session. 2009CON_Robot_Electrical_Design_Skierkiewicz

I highly recommend the hour spent watching this recording of him talking about the heart and life blood of FRC robots. I suppose you're going to ask where to get it. Still scratching my head on that one. Google Al's name, exclude chief delphi, should get you close to it online.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

I'd recommend just having a power strip and a couple of extra chargers.

We have three batteries and one charger, so we have a completely different problem.

Thaine

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

A wheeled battery cart that you can just wheel in and out of the competition is a great way to keep track of all your batteries and keep them charged. We built one onto a 2 wheeled dolly using wood. Other teams I've seen get more elaborate. Just get creative and come up with a simple design.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

We cut the alligator plugs off of the charger and splice terminated them to the Anderson plug.

Re: good way to keep spare batteries topped off??
 

Especially for rookies:

It is important to note that extra batteries and chargers shouldn't be considered optional -- they are necessary to compete. Depending on the year, we would sometimes go through a battery every match (and in other years it would take three times that, or more, to drain a battery to the point where we wanted to replace it).

Stalled drive motors due to pushing matches, extreme amounts of pneumatic usage (and thus a continuously-running compressor), etc, can really create quite a drain, and it would be quite disappointing to get into the tournament at your regional and not have sufficient batteries for the job!

Every game should start with a fully topped-off battery, and some of those chargers are S-L-O-W. Make sure you have enough!