what is the size of the electronics

[Jon Stratis]

To support what Al said... back in 2008 (Overdrive) our robot operated more or less like a forklift in order to lift the ball 7 feet in the air. On the lift were two motors designed to "suck in" and hold the ball in place, and later "spit it out". The wires running to those two motors were something like 14 feet long.

We saw a HUGE voltage drop across those wires (so large, in fact, that the motors couldn't do their job). The design of the robot didn't allow any other options for running the wire... so our options were to use a larger diameter wire (which would reduce the resistance, but decrease the flexibility in the wire as well), or run multiple wires in parallel. We went with the second option, which earned us some questions (and then compliments!) from judges and inspectors - each spike had 2 m+ and 2 m- wires, and each motor also had 4 wires going into it. Perfectly legal configuration (and it cut the voltage drop in half), but at first glance it appears as though we were either trying to use 2 spikes to power each motor, or trying to power 2 motors from each spike.

Voltage drop across wires is real, and it can have horrible affects on your robot. Any time you have two motors that need to work together, or extremely long lengths of wire, you'd better consider this!