[Peter Johnson]

Originally Posted by ASD20

I would guess that $5 noname chinese usb battery packs off of Amazon are exactly the type of thing the GDC has created so many electrical rules to ban. Unless they only approved a few specific models, regulating something like this would be a nightmare. Not to mention the 5V/2A isn't even enough for many computers. Odroids (5V/4A) and Jetsons (12 or 19V ??) come to mind.

Exactly. There are safety concerns as well given the prevalence of lithium ion chemistry batteries. You do NOT want a large one of those punctured or shorted. Cell phones and Kangaroos have pretty small batteries, and laptops are typically above the $400 cost limit (or considered too heavy). Punctures in even small LiPo batteries can be quite destructive, and a large lithium ion battery on a FRC robot sounds like a really bad idea when DC to DC converters (or doing vision processing on the driver station) are perfectly viable alternatives.