Quote:
Originally Posted by ohrly?
I realize now that was because we chose our gear ratios terribly and the shooter motors were running very inefficiently, but all the same I wanted to try to isolate the RPi's power from the rest of the robot so it wouldn't cut out.
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The problem ultimately will be that you can't really store energy for a protracted period with the FRC rule limitations on custom circuits.
The allowance of a laptop and it's battery I think were more intended to allow teams to not have to make more electronic modifications to the laptops which usually come neatly packaged.
I suspect if you put any largish capacitor or battery on the robot within a custom circuit specifically to provide 0.X seconds of storage you'll start to have issues getting through inspection.
I would be interested to know if anyone has managed to pull off a storage capacitor or battery in a custom circuit and made it through an actual FRC inspection. You can get high Farad value capacitors at 5V that would easily provide a robust filter against short drops in the battery. However those capacitors do not generally discharge themselves and for a relatively short period of time after a power off power will remain. It is possible to make a discharge circuit for a capacitor after power off but I'm not even sure the capacitors or auxillary battery would be allowed.