Useful Idea for Champs?

[pilleya]

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Originally Posted by TehSwegGey

I know that we have had a lot of problems with our driver station running low on battery this season. Anker, a company that makes portable batteries, recently unveiled their PowerHouse, an AC portable battery available for $500. This seems like a heavy price tag, but I think that it could be really useful to keep on the cart to charge the laptop in between matches, especially for the finals.

We are trying to get one through a contest they are hosting right now. If you want to help us out, and enter the contest as well, just follow the link: https://www.anker.com/deals/powerhou...908b7c90407029 and then share the link with your team mates and other nearby teams! Just be wary not to use school email addresses, because too many school accounts can get your points removed.

I think this could be a really useful tool for champs. See ya'll there next week!

Someone else had suggested using this for charging batteries between finals, or even for outreach events. I think that this kind of product could have tons of benefits for FIRST teams in general.

"AC Battery" I think not

Many teams already use a DC-AC Inverter to allow them to use a SLA robot battery. There is a inverter available from Andymark which already has a anderson connector on for this purpose http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0626.htm it seems to be out of stock, but there are plenty of other alternatives which cost below $50. It doesn't need to be very powerful for a laptop, 150watts or 200watts max.

If you want to fork out the $500 I think you'd be much better purchasing a laptop with longer battery life.