Lessons learned by teams for next year...

[DougHogg]

Our team learned some lessons this year the hard way by experiencing a problem or loss that we could have prevented.

1) In the third match of the finals in the S. California Regional, we couldn't lift our arm for the last 20 seconds because we our battery voltage dropped too low.

We learned that if a battery isn't allowed to complete it's charging cycle, it can show a high voltage because of a "surface charge" but still not be fully charged. In fact, if you disconnect a battery from a charger (or unplug the charger) part way through the charging cycle and then put the battery back on charge, often the charger will get fooled by the surface charge and refuse to continue charging the battery. That battery will then be only partially charged, although showing a voltage over 13 until the surface charge dissipates overnight or until a load is put on the battery for a few minutes.

2) As posted in another thread, having a wedge on the front of your robot is great when other robots are trying to push you, but it isn't so great when you get your alliance dq'ed (disqualified) twice in the same quarter finals for tipping opponents. We were trying to defend a goal and were not trying to tip anyone, but it still happened. (Amazingly, we still won the quarter finals in Archimedes because in one of the matches, our opponents were dq'ed for tipping also, so that match was a tie: 0 to 0.)

3) In previous years, we had used velcro or zip ties to secure the two halves of the Anderson connectors during a match (something that we learned from other teams), but it didn't seem to be a problem this year, so we didn't bother. In the second match of the semi-finals on Archimedes, our battery disconnected after two collisions right at the beginning of the match. (My apologies to our partners, teams 997, 65 and 138.)

Did your team have similar experiences? If so, post them and maybe we will save other teams (or even our own teams) from a similar fate in years to come, because it seems to be easy to forget some of the successful things that we have done in the past.

Doug Hogg