Important Q/A forum responses

[Billfred]

Here's one that's going to get a lot of people, if it's not publicized...

Originally Posted by FRC1618

Just to be crystal clear, can a team utilize a battery other than the 2007 FRC-legal batteries for pre-charging a pneumatics system before a match, provided a legal battery is swapped in before the robot takes the field? For moving some appendage of the robot into position before a match under similar circumstances?

Originally Posted by GDC

Non-competition batteries may be used on the practice day, and in the pits for development, debugging, etc. However, all operations of the robots during the competition matches (qualifier matches and elimination matches), and done to prepare the robot for competition (e.g. charging the pneumatic system for a match, or positioning an arm for the start of a match) must be conducted with the competition batteries.

We allow teams to have an offboard compressor to reduce the weight of the robot. However, control and power must come from the competition robot, and therefor the competition batteries. Per Rule <R46>, you must use competition legal batteries in preparation for a competition match.