[MecaNaught]

Batteries really should be a bigger subject in FRC. If you're using a motor shooter, your battery will make or break your shot range and how reliable it will be. We experienced this in 2014, where we had a mini toughbox with two CIM motors attached to a thrower. We also experienced a huge increase in range by applying an electronic anti-oxidization agent to the terminals of our motor controllers.

Every battery you buy will have a different maximum AH, and how much draw it can handle. You can get a little battery beak from Andymark, and it will calculate it in %. Our good batteries are 130%. We had to throw about 6 batteries to the side before this years competition and used mostly new batteries because our older ones would only get about 50% charge.

There's a lot more to testing batteries, and if you're building something that is very reliant on fluctuations in electricity, you should make a test setup to get the exact discharge of each battery.