Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Marshall,
Can you please specify what you think is ambiguous in the rule so we can speak from a common position?
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Happily. I want to know what "integral to and part of" means. Q&A said it means "essential to completeness" but that isn't true for laptop batteries. Laptops don't require batteries to function. I know this because I can remove the battery from my laptop and it will still run from a wall source. I can put a regulator in line and get it to run off a ROBOT battery.
So what characteristic or characteristics make a battery "essential to completeness" for a COTS computing device?
Is it enough to have a device that is merely designed to accept a battery and has a battery slot/containment/attachment area? Does it have to be sold with the battery?
If I can replace the battery for a laptop then why can't I add a battery to a raspberry pi? What's the difference in engineering terms?
What about a circuit board with some inputs labeled "battery"? Does that count as having a COTS device that has an integral battery?
What engineering challenge is FIRST proposing teams solve by making a team with a raspberry pi engineer a bulletproof system to keep their pi from needing to be reflashed from corruption but yet a team who can put a laptop on the robot doesn't have to worry about any of that? What is the point in this?
They want teams with better vision systems and better autonomous (I had a nice chat about it with Don and some folks from IBM last year) so why not allow USB battery packs for COTS devices?
EDIT: Also want to point out that while you can't use a USB battery pack for your Pi, you can gut a laptop down to nothing and use it to power a USB port that you can run your Pi off of. WTF?!?! (Where's The Flashlight?)