Best way to charge batteries

[Fej]

Originally Posted by ILAMtitan

A beginner team should be ok with using new batteries and a multimeter along with the driver station debug plots to evaluate battery health, but getting more advanced tools should be a priority for their second season. As you start to develop an arsenal of batteries, with some being several years old, proper care and testing to evaluate worthiness before regionals is critical. Combining good charging and storage with proper evaluation can really set your mind at ease about this when you're rushing to the next qual match.

My team is 10 years old. While none of the batteries left are that old, I feel that we really don't have much of a clue about how to check whether batteries are good or bad for competition use.

One of our mentors used to work in auto repair. He still has a carbon-pile tester. Apparently, that harms the batteries, correct? Should we go about using it?

I like to think that we'll be okay, but the next competition is on Saturday and we have 3 known good batteries (two MKs - brand new - and one Genesis, came in this year's KoP).

With that in mind, should we bother bringing down the charge rate to 4A or 2A or should we leave it at 6A during the competition?

On one hand, we have to have a full battery. On the other, if it dies halfway through the match, well it didn't do much good now did it xD