I'm just waiting for someone to show up with active cooling on their battery connector. (This isn't as ridiculous as it seems, if your intention is to follow the rules, and yet still extract maximum performance from your robot.)
I actually thought it was FIRST's intention to allow the SB120 (and other) connectors this year, when I noted on kickoff day that the rules referred to Anderson connectors without referencing the KOP checklist or the SB50 model. But it appears that in order to avoid undersized Anderson connectors being used, FIRST amended the rule to specify the SB50 only, rather than any SB-series connector rated by APP for at least 50 A. (Some teams were already using the SB120, which was at least plausibly legal in some years, but probably illegal in others.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Hold on so we get some real facts listed. The SB 50 was not introduced when we went to the IFI controllers. It became mandated much later. WildStang used a similar connector for many years prior to the start of the SB50.
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I'm pretty sure the Anderson SB50 was included in the 2000 KOP
when the first Stamp-based IFI controllers arrived. 188 certainly used them from 2000 to the present. In fact, I
think it was provided in 1999 with the green batteries that were used prior to the grey Exides. (It's possible that one of the clones of the SB50, like the one produced by Tyco/TE Connectivity was supplied instead, but that should be immaterial in this context.) I'm not sure when the rules explicitly mandated an SB50 (either by lack of an alternative, or by name), but certainly the 2000s-era additional hardware list and Small Parts catalogue would have limited the legal alternatives.