12V Battery Maintenance

[cbolin]

Hi,
How do you guys maintain the 12V batteries? Do you charge them until they're over 13V....use them in practice until they drop down below 12V or the motors have no more uummph!? Do you put a load on them and measure voltage over time to determine if they can 'hold' a charge? Do you wait until they begin leaking and toss them?
Have you built a load tester? If so, what did it consist of and conceptually how did you use it?

In short, how do you guys ensure your battery has what it takes to make it through the 2 minute match?

I have a lot of batteries (over 20) that have been collected over the years in robotics. Like to use them if we can....toss them if they're junk, etc.

I can use a Dashboard viewer program I wrote to grab data from the battery along with any other variable that can be monitored. Have any of you utilized the Dashboard for battery load testing or monitoring?

Regards,
ChuckB