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Well, I'm jealous. The only issue I can see is that the cover and the casters will take up valuable pit space. Are there any plans to use that void for anything to reclaim the lost space?
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Well, since the lid can cover the wheels, the lid is taking up space in the pit that the wheels would already be taking up space in. The wheels stick out past the frame ~7", so its not taking up too much extra space in the pit. We decided it was worth having it in this orientation.
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I can only begin to express my envy about your energy supply strategy. This is a gem for sure. I think the 80/20 people will join the rest of us in our desire to see construction details.
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Thanks! We are planning on sending them pictures of the project, and hopefully they will include it in one of their example booklets.
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There was a famous supercomputer, the Cray, that had its power supplies arranged radially around the perimeter of the CPU. There were seat cushions on them. I mention this as it is quite possibly the only way you could improve this cart.
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hahaha, we actually origionally were thinking about adding seat cushions to it. We were going to have it perpanantly laying down, and have the lid open like a chest, with the top of the lid doubling as seats, since people in the pit are always looking for a place to sit (especially the mentors
). Unfortunately we went in another direction.
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Oh we could go radical with a Droid interface that can report the status of each battery and turn on an indicator light next to the battery suggested for use in the next match. While you're at it a Wi-Fi hotspot? Home page to NASA select or the Blue Alliance on a built-in screen?
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Well, I forgot to mention we have a Battery Beak that will also always be on the cart. Hopefully some of these things will be part of our new display case/cart/thing that we will hopefully design and build in the near future...
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The only thing I noticed was that the pins holding the handle in place stick out the back. (I think) If they do, it would be an exposure to the handler's shins that could be reduced by making the pin holes go side-to-side in the bracket holes. I know, big deal, right? I'm going to color this whole post green for envy. thanks for sharing.
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They stick out about 3/8". I believe origionally they were going sideways but somewhere along the way they got switched to where they are now. Not sure why, but I actually tried hitting my leg against the pins, brackets, etc. sticking out of it and it didn't seem to bad. If we think its too much, we can always just drill the holes in sideways.
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That is one intense battery cart...I think all that could make this better would be a touch screen interface or a projector for matches from other regionals! Very nice Now we gotta get started on ours...
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There are plans in the works for the future to have a possible touch-screen setup for our display area, and have a projector mounted on our pit frame that will project on the opposite wall. We'll see what happens...
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I'm scared to see what happens if you engineer a robot as well as the cart is engineered. Well done. Now I'm eagerly awaiting a release of the 2012 robot.
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Thanks! The robot will be released on CD with pictures and video right before the KC Regional (week 1).
-Nick
The more interesting arguments were around a related subject: whether it was pronounced "Wago tool" or "screwdriver". - Billfred [more] 
08-02-2012, 16:37
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