Anderson Power Pole

[Jon Stratis]

Just wanted to add one use for them from two seasons ago (Break Away)... Our robot was designed to use a boat winch (hooked up to a CIM motor) to lift itself on the pole. It worked very well, and the way it was designed you couldn't pull out the strap from the winch. But you could drive the motor backwards to let the strap out! We made a pair of PowerPoles easily accessible (but protected from other robots hitting them) between the motor and the victor powering it. It was then a simple matter, between matches, to manually hook a battery up to the PowerPoles (Through a special, fuse-protected connector cable with the normal Anderson battery connector on one end, and a pair of PowerPoles on the other) and let out enough slack to "reset" the hanging mechanism. With this, you always knew you were plugging it in correctly, and it was easy to ensure everything was properly reset and ready for the next match!