Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Stand alone flashlights have always been required to be powered by the robot battery.
Please read
R37. The only legal source of electrical energy for the ROBOT...
In addition under R07
M. High intensity light sources used on the ROBOT (e.g. super bright LED sources marketed as ‘military grade’ or ‘self-defense’) may only be illuminated for a brief time while targeting and may need to be shrouded to prevent any exposure to participants. Complaints about the use of such light sources will be followed by re-inspection and possible disablement of the device.
R96 refers to the Driver Station only.
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R37 has exceptions for batteries that are integral to and part of a COTS computing device. If I call it a microcontroller with a bright status LED is that not a COTS computing device? It's definitely not "military grade".
This is legal:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834234171
But yet this might not be:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13896
And this might not be either:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13276
Al, I love you guys a lot (seriously, the LRIs have like the worst job because of people like me who constantly needle them) but these battery rules are broken. They've been broken for several years since portable USB battery packs became very prevalent.
I can use the same basic technology if it is inside of a cell phone but yet it's not legal if the battery isn't sold with the widget as is the case with this carrier board for a TX1 that has an integrated charging/discharging circuit:
http://auvidea.eu/images/auvidea/pro...top_bottom.jpg
And I haven't even talked about super-capacitors which can be used as part of a custom circuit and that seems perfectly legal.
I get that you don't want to encourage teams to play with batteries and start fires. I really do. BUT the battery rules need to move to the paradigm that many of the other rules have adopted of "allow and explain".
It makes no sense to me that a team can use a kangaroo PC with a battery built in to it because it is assumed that it is somehow safer than the above linked TX1 carrier that we would need to add a battery to ourselves. If neither is part of the control pathways for the robot and the robot can be safely disabled then what is the harm? Obviously the current rules don't prevent robots from catching on fire as it is.
Part of the issue is that the intent of this rule isn't clear. Is it to prevent a fire? Then why allow other batteries at all? Why allow capacitors?
Or is it to prevent teams from creating a robot that can't be disabled? Great, then make it so batteries other than the "one true source of power" are legal provided that when the robot is disabled all motor activity must stop... or wait, we can't actually do that anymore because of the spinning LIDAR systems that are now legal and will likely keep spinning even when the robot is disabled.
EDIT: Also, a note to inspectors. The current rules allow for the Galaxy Note 7 to be used on a robot.