O/I POWER?

[Alan Anderson]

We played around with a portable power supply early this year. Having been part of the First Robotics Competition for so many years, we had a bunch of ancient 12-volt drill battery packs and chargers sitting in a forgotten corner of our shop. I found some that worked and made up a cable that plugged into the OI power input at one end and had connectors that attached to the battery at the other. The voltage was fine, and the operator could wander around the shop controlling our prototype Mecanum 'bot with nothing tying the OI to the wall.

The battery packs were not in the best shape, and only lasted for about 10-20 minutes before they would stop powering the OI reliably, but as a proof of concept it worked very well. I'm thinking we could build an operator console for robot demos that has a slot to plug in a drill battery, like the way the robots themselves were powered in the mid-'90s.