Battery Chargers

[Jon Lawton]

This year's battery is 12V at 18Ah, the charger is somwhere about 14V at 1A.

Last year's battery is 12V at 17.5Ah, the charger is some voltage I don't know off the top of my head, at 4A.

So... assuming the charging is 100% efficent (HAH!):

18A at 1A/hour = 18 hours
17.5A at 4A/hour = 4.375 hours

Remember though, these values are for a *totally* dead battery (and they are a little small, I can gaurentee that it won't charge at 100% efficency)!

I'd reccomend charging your batteries up all of the way, and putting some kind of ammeter on your robot and charger. This way you can have a pretty good idea of the charge state of the battery.

Why did FIRST give us this *WIMPY* charger this year? Why do they care what we use to put energy back into the battery? This, I think, is most uncool.