battery organizer/ charger

[xxpingphuongxx]

aw, didnt know this job could get a person bury alive. Well this year I'm the battery girl for my team (GO 931!) but yeah, its like only I am allowed to touch the batteries, installed, and charge them. And i get to sit on a box like thingy where all the batteries are being charged.

[synth3tk]

I don\'t remember which team it was, but at Buckeye last season there was a team who collaborated with local automation company Rockwell Automation to build a super complex yet simple system complete with touch-screen control center. Brilliant.

[Mr. Freeman]

A touch screen control center for a battery box? Seems overkill to me, though I can't say I wouldn't like to use it.

I've been trying to build a battery box out of wood with 4 slots for batteries and 4 "mounting points" for the chargers, but the rest of my team is under the impression that the rat's nest of wires that is our current system is just fine. It's most likely not going to be finished by the competition.

[Devibeast]

Originally Posted by xxpingphuongxx

aw, didnt know this job could get a person bury alive. Well this year I'm the battery girl for my team (GO 931!) but yeah, its like only I am allowed to touch the batteries, installed, and charge them. And i get to sit on a box like thingy where all the batteries are being charged.

At least you will live
I am the one for the most part who is dealing with batteries.
We actually bought another cart like the one for our robot and had one member of our team convert it into a battery cart. Actually it was more like 5 people but it took about 4-5 weeks so we say one person. It is all about organization and whatever works, works.

[octothorpe]

What our team has done in the past (lacking any charger better than the KOP one, which has a dubiously effective indicator light) was simply to line the batteries up in a row on the pit floor. We'd add a strip of masking tape, label it "charging... charging... charged" and always add batteries to the left and remove them from the right. A very imprecise system to be sure, but a simple and fairly reliable one, at least in our experience. If your batteries are all pretty much equally healthy, then 9 times out of 10 the one that's been charging longest is the most charged.

For this season, however, we purchased an Interacter X5 with multiple indicator lights for showing the charge state of each battery, so it remains to be seen if we will use the old system. We've never tested our batteries and tried to rank them, although it'd certainly be a good idea.

[Devibeast]

Originally Posted by Mr. Freeman

A touch screen control center for a battery box? Seems overkill to me, though I can't say I wouldn't like to use it.

I've been trying to build a battery box out of wood with 4 slots for batteries and 4 "mounting points" for the chargers, but the rest of my team is under the impression that the rat's nest of wires that is our current system is just fine. It's most likely not going to be finished by the competition.

what competitions are you guys attending? if you cant get it done by the first one, get it ready for your local one or for the off season. They will realize what needs to be done eventually.

[Mr. Freeman]

The problem isn't the complexity, it's that we only meet once a week for a very short time between ship date and the competition. I'd have to bring it home to finish it, which I might actually do. We're attending the CO. regional, I think that's a week 4 or 5 regional.

[Devibeast]

Actually our team during the off season meets only on Wednesdays. During build season however we meet everyday. We just had some one design it on auto-sketch (yes the old program from autodesk) and they took the measurements for the battery cart and took them about 4 weeks to design it because they forgot how to use the program, and we had only one person working on it by the time it came to construction and we also have 8 slots. Good luck and remember Keep it simple.

If you want i can also draw you up a sketch of an idea i have. All i require is whether you want it to roll or you want it to be carried. Personally i would recommend it being able to roll.

[Tim Arnold]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Prior to competition we usually buy a new set of batteries for the season. If we use old ones they are load tested and ranked.... If they mess up we generally kill them and bury their corpse under the pits while looking for another volunteer

1) Rofl. You could just handcuff them to the battery cart (so they are "held" responsible for it rolling out of the bus, har har). 2) What is your method for load testing the batteries?

[Devibeast]

For my own sake i really really really hope no one on my team acquires handcuffs in the next week because i might be packed in the crate

[diesel]

Originally Posted by blakcheez

I don\'t remember which team it was, but at Buckeye last season there was a team who collaborated with local automation company Rockwell Automation to build a super complex yet simple system complete with touch-screen control center. Brilliant.

Our team had the pit next them (More Robotics) for the Wisconsin Regional. The touchpad didn't do anything more than a whiteboard (besides look cool).
I orginally thought they actually had the chargers hooked up to the touchscreen, but they didn't. When a battery finished charging they touched the screen and the that told it the battery was charged. The also had six rechargers which I think is overkill.

[Richard McClellan]

Our team likes to add a little fun to the task of charging batteries, so we give every battery a different name. This year's batteries are "Vegetable" and "Soup" (both found in a tin can, our team mascot). We also have batteries such as Smoky, Spicy, Mild, Thorny, etc. that we use for some of our other competitions

[xxpingphuongxx]

Originally Posted by Devibeast

At least you will live
I am the one for the most part who is dealing with batteries.
We actually bought another cart like the one for our robot and had one member of our team convert it into a battery cart. Actually it was more like 5 people but it took about 4-5 weeks so we say one person. It is all about organization and whatever works, works.

lol, nice. I think our battery cart has been around since like '02. I don't know.
Nice math ya just did there. ^_^

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by blakcheez

I don\'t remember which team it was, but at Buckeye last season there was a team who collaborated with local automation company Rockwell Automation to build a super complex yet simple system complete with touch-screen control center. Brilliant.

It was either 1038 or 1126 IIRC. It might be a little overkill for battery charging, but what a beautiful and innovative system they had.

1676 uses a home-built battery 'truck' (it looks like a hand truck, but has shelves) with 5 chargers and 10 batteries. Like others, we assign one student to batteries, and they can't get chased out of the pits. Only 4 of the batteries are 2008, the rest 2007. We capacity test and rank them using a borrowed CBA2 from West Mountain Radio.

Originally Posted by xxpingphuongxx

Well this year I'm the battery girl for my team (GO 931!) but yeah, its like only I am allowed to touch the batteries, installed, and charge them. And i get to sit on a box like thingy where all the batteries are being charged.

Batt-Girl!



Don