[FTC]: Homebrew Power Distribution Module

[wgardner]

Originally Posted by aklego

I believe you can power the Legacy module directly from the phone and completely bypass the need for the hub and voltage converter.

We have a JV rookie team that did this for prototyping and scrimmaging this year and it worked great. They connected the USB cable direct from the phone to the Legacy module. They used an Anderson Powerpole distribution block to split the power out from the battery switch to all legacy motor and servo controllers.

[BSV]

With ZTE Speeds now only $20, we can make several demo robots for almost no cost to us. I wonder how long the phone battery will last between charges, though?

Thanks for the advice! We'll try this out soon.

[ftcTeam6389]

Originally Posted by BSV

With ZTE Speeds now only $20, we can make several demo robots for almost no cost to us. I wonder how long the phone battery will last between charges, though?

Thanks for the advice! We'll try this out soon.

Hi,

We run our Krazy Kubes outreach game with the ZTE speed phones quite a bit, and have found that they last up to 5-6 hours on a single full charge for both the RC and DS.

- The Lazybotts

[BSV]

Originally Posted by ftcTeam6389

Hi,

We run our Krazy Kubes outreach game with the ZTE speed phones quite a bit, and have found that they last up to 5-6 hours on a single full charge for both the RC and DS.

- The Lazybotts

Great, thanks for the info.

When we joined the program last year, all the electronics were a few years old and in really bad shape (there are 3 FTC teams, here). So we purchased all new motor controllers and stuff as we raised enough funds. Then, of course, the new stuff came out, which means we have a pretty good amount of old electronics in good shape. We'll likely replace the ZTE speeds on all the competition 'bots with something else (one of them already has Moto G2s) and use the ZTEs for the outreach bots.

The summer is going to be fun. Lots of stuff to do.