PSA: Secure your battery

[efoote868]

This may be the last thing from your mind right now, but it still haunts my memory. Make sure your robot battery is secure, and the design is fool-proof.

Feel free to share your team's stories of unsecured battery mishaps.

TechHOUNDS Story time:
https://youtu.be/4uIx69RdvsY
2006 Newton QF4-1. The eventual Newton Champions and Einstein runner-ups play against the lowly 6th seed. This match is over after autonomous, the 3rd seed outscoring the opposing alliance 58-3, winning 119-69. Hope isn't lost, because the 6th seed knows they were able to outscore the opponent 66-61 in teleop. They know that all they need to do is play defense during autonomous...

https://youtu.be/Kw-ryE_8nas
4 seconds into autonomous, 868 smacks into 968, followed by 66 hitting 25. The red alliance only scores 2 balls, starting with a much more manageable 16 point advantage.
Tele-op period, and whats this? 868, the TechHOUNDS aren't moving! 10 seconds of elation now turns into season ending heartbreak. It was later determined that the battery was improperly installed, came loose and knocked open the pneumatic air dump, causing the robot to sit and never move the rest of the match. The very feature for a strategy that won our team the Xerox Creativity Award on Einstein became our Achilles heel with a loose battery...



Please don't learn the hard way that an unsecured, loose battery will lose matches.