[Doc Wu]

I am also a proponent of the West Mountain Radio CBA III. I agree at first, you will not know how to interpret the results, especially since the graphs auto-scale to fill the screen.

The real value of the results shows up when you overlay the test results. Then you see the differences between tests. I test each battery at the beginning of the season and do an overlay of all the batteries. It becomes easy to see which batteries are the strongest and which are getting weak.

The other use is when a battery is suspected of getting weak. Test it again and overlay the results with the test you did at the beginning of the season.

Bad cells and broken internal connections are quickly spotted with the CBA III.

If a team was short on money and can't afford the Battery Beak and a CBA III, I'd take the CBA III. It's only shortcoming is it can't be used quickly in the pits. You must be disciplined enough to test all your batteries ahead of time.

Another recommendation I make is (and I think some of the posters here were alluding to it) is to number your competition batteries and use them in sequence. Don't fall into the trap of saying "Battery 3 was strong that last match, let's use it again." Pretty soon, you have overused battery 3 and it's your weakest one.

Batteries need to be given time to charge, as well as time to cool after charging. Having more batteries than you need and rotating them in sequence allows them to be used equally and be given the best operating conditions.

A two minute match along with a few minutes of power on before a match should not come anywhere near depleting these batteries. If you run a match, then charge them, they should be able to be charged back to full capacity fairly quickly. You don't need one charger per battery. A 1-2 or 1-3 ratio should be enough.

I find that the most damaging thing to the batteries is practice and demos. We get playing with the robot and run it for 10-15 minutes until someone notices the battery won't drive the robot anymore. By then you've severely depleted the battery. They only can take so much of that.