[Gdeaver]

Tim Allen would be proud of First this year. "more power" This year a large portion of First teams will be pushing the the robot power system to the limit. A large number of robots are going to push power draw beyond rating and eat up safety factor of many components of the power system. There are going to be problems. Saw many examples of this last year. Smart teams will develop power management strategies and be able to push the power system with out failures and reliability problems. Those who don't will learn the hard way of what happens when you push systems beyond their safe operating zone. Scouting needs to track teams that have "power problems". Bad alliance choice. Get smart or suffer. The new control system has the resource to help teams with power management. This is a comprehensive systems problem and is complex. Teams will need to put much effort into this. Positive is that this is an excellent opportunity for students to learn the process of data collection, analysis and the development of strategies based on this. The bad part what we are teaching future engineers. "More Power" is not an attitude future engineers should embrace. First could address this problem by limiting motor choice for drive trains. That would get the forum hopping. Or more like the real world, First could attach cost to the robot power. Like each cim above 4 costs a team xx points every match. With the new PDB they could asses a xx point penalty for every total robot power draw above xxxx watts. We should teach the cost of power.