minibot battery

[Cascade]

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

May I ask where this document came from? I traded emails with Al Skierkiewicz on the 9th and it did not exist to his knowledge. It was not available at FL either...

I just checked the First site Manual, Team updates and KOP pages and saw nothing.

Could you provide a link?

Mike

Mike, found it again. Look in the LRI Forum, second post from the bottom, by fmerrick. The .PDF is there.

Thanks

[Alice141]

I was wondering about the wording of the Minibot rules:

The FRC manual sec4:
R92"exactly one 12V rechargeable NiMH battery pack identical to those supplied in the FTC kit of parts (PN W739057)"
But
"No more than one HiTechnic DC motor controllers"

Since FIRST did not choose to say "No more than one battery", are you required to have the 2lb battery on your Minibot?

Thanks,

[BornaE]

Yes, You are required to have that battery on the minibot.

Also the only legal source of power for the minibot upwards motions is that battery. Spring or anything else besides the battery is not allowed to provide or assist the upwards movement of the minibot.

Originally Posted by Alice141

I was wondering about the wording of the Minibot rules:

The FRC manual sec4:
R92"exactly one 12V rechargeable NiMH battery pack identical to those supplied in the FTC kit of parts (PN W739057)"
But
"No more than one HiTechnic DC motor controllers"

Since FIRST did not choose to say "No more than one battery", are you required to have the 2lb battery on your Minibot?

Thanks,

[Andrew Schreiber]

Assuming that is the two halves of the actual tetrix battery it is legal. No where in the Minibot rules does it forbid modification of the battery.

Edit: How is it a violation of 92c? It is not more than 1 battery.

[martin417]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Assuming that is the two halves of the actual tetrix battery it is legal. No where in the Minibot rules does it forbid modification of the battery.

Edit: How is it a violation of 92c? It is not more than 1 battery.

Don't ask me, the GDC has spoken.

[royal robotics]

if it is allegle y did thay let it on

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by martin417

Don't ask me, the GDC has spoken.

I agree that it SHOULDN'T be because it just looks like it should be illegal but I couldn't find a rule against it.

Originally Posted by royal robotics

if it is allegle y did thay let it on

English please...

It is possible they didn't find a rule against it (I didn't when I looked).

[EricH]

They didn't find a rule against it. However, that's because they didn't look in the Q&A. See Martin's post. That's not the rule... but it's supposed to be how the rule is called.

Now, how separating a cells is a violation is the tough part. I would suspect that the rule calling for an identical battery is why it's a violation. Not sure how an electrically unchanged battery being separated while remaining electrically the same is a violation--electrically, it should be identical--but, nonetheless, that is the call the GDC has chosen to make, and as such is the ruling that needs to be listened to.


Oh, and If I can translate royal robotics' post: "if it is illegal why did they let it on " (Next up after proper English spelling will be proper English capitalization and punctuation, which for now is left as an exercise for those that need the practice.)

It's quite possible that the inspectors simply missed that it was illegal, and nobody complained at the event. This happens from time to time; there have been robots rebuilt at the Championship because they were not in compliance with the rules, yet they had passed regional inspection. I've had to reject stuff that non-official inspections had said was okay. It happens.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Edit: How is it a violation of 92c? It is not more than 1 battery.

There is a single word in <R92-C> that can make the difference between legal and illegal here. That word is "identical". The battery, once split into halves, is no longer identical to the battery as purchased. Hence, it's not legal to use.

I think that's what the GDC was saying regarding separating the cells.

[EricH]

If that's two of the allowed batteries, then one of them is definitely illegal. If it's one split in half, that would probably place it under the "illegal" category due to it no longer being identical to the legal battery. <R92-C> bans more than one battery and non-identical batteries (save the fuse replacement).

You might be able to do it if one of the batteries was not connected, but that is still a violation of <R92-C>.

I'm not going to ask whose it was, or who let it onto the field. But if they read this, then I might suggest replacing one battery with an appropriate mass of an allowed material--and the other with a fully legal battery--or moving the battery location.