Just for some more clarification, if you bring batteries to the competiton and already have the connections tied in, then the weight of those batteries will be considered part of your withholding allowance, but you can bring as many batteries as you want as long as you assemble the connections at the competition. It just sounds a little wierd and were hoping to bring as many batteries as we can so can someone tell me if this is right or not
Completely agree. This is the same reason I always get mad at people asking teachers how long a paper has to be, then whine because they say it is too long. You should not have asked in the first place!
Here is what I’m going to do:
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I’m going to email my VirginiaFIRST rep and protest the ruling.
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I’m not going to have my team remove the leads from the batteries. They are going to arrive at VCU, as they are now, in a black tote labeled “batteries.” IF someone wants to check them as we arrive, they are more than welcome to do it. If the inspector informs us that they are illegal (Personally, I don’t think that’s going to happen.), we will remove the leads and put them back on 5 minutes later.
Yes, this may not be completely ‘GP’, but a little civil disobedience now and then isn’t such a bad thing.
That’s all fine and dandy, but don’t tell us not to lawyer the rules when they turn around and lawyer them themselves (regardless of the reason they are doing it). Especially when its happening now - there are teams getting ready for competition next week and now they have this stupid rule (that has no good reason to exist) to contend with.
What if you spent a few days making sure every one of your batteries is done correctly? This ruling is absurd.
Considering that the Q&A is meant to clarify rules, not create them, the ruling that batteries with cables are non-COTS has always existed, so if we used our common sense to infer that batteries with cables were COTS we were unknowingly breaking the existing rules. The questions that teams have asked building up to this ruling have been attempts to clarify that our original common sense understanding was indeed correct and there were inconsistencies with the Q&A’s responses, not the other way around.
I don’t understand how this could be legal. If it were, three teams could bring in three separate parts of a new robot, bolt it together, then have one team compete with it. My common sense tells me that’s not what the withholding allowance is for. Since your common sense tells you one thing & my common sense tells you another, it looks like we need a clarification.
I believe you have accurately summarized the GDC’s current position on fabricated battery assemblies. I myself don’t think it’s “right”, but it’s in the rules.
For teams like us (and im sure there are many out there) who will be attending our first regional literally 1.5 miles from home (boston) this is a huge pain. Were certainly not going to ship out batteries a mile and half when we could just drive them over. Not to mention we have already cut our terminals to length and heat shrunk them. Why should we have to buy more terminals from andymark? Also you want to minimize the 6 AWG wire on your robot so if were were to connect a full length terminal we would be really stressing the wire and connections on the battery and at the connector end.
The GDC doesn’t just interpret the rules they write them. They could easily say that this is the letter of rule but it will be changed in the next update.
What they have ruled is totally insane.
The real pain here is that this came out AFTER the bot was shipped. We had our allowance planned already, and it didn’t include the batteries. If we had known, we could have packed the batteries into the crate and saved the pain. I don’t understand the logic here. Regardless of the wording of the rules, based on past experience, this is a rule change, not a clarification.:mad:
What they have ruled is reasonably logical given that the Q&A is solely for clarification of rules, and as the rules stand a battery with cables attached is a modified COTS item. There is nothing to say that there won’t be a team update excluding batteries from the withholding weight. If the GDC doesn’t limit itself to only interpreting rules in the Q&A, and leaving changes for team updates then the whole system breaks down. The various channels have their purposes, and the Q&A’s is to clarify existing rules.
Thanks I just wanted to be 100% sure it sounds wierd but battery connectons dont take too long so I guess we can deal with it. Also from looking at the other replies this appears to have become quite an issue so for those of you who are contacting FIRST please just keep us updated on your discussions.
I would tend to disagree.
I don’t believe this is reasonably logical. It flies in the face of years and years of competitions and what has been legal in the past. This is rules lawyering at it’s worst - literal interpretation of the rules without regard to intent.
I also disagree with your statement of “the whole system breaks down”. This is FIRST’s, and by extension the GDC’s, game and rules. They have the ability to do ANYTHING they want to do. If they make a ruling in the Q&A, then pass it on in the Team Updates, then that’s just fine. It would certainly save the chaos and confusion that this is creating.
Now, very hopefully, the GDC clarifies this in an update today. If not, I’m certainly going to regard their decision making process in a whole new light.
FRC has decided to make parts of the New Control System reusable. That’s right. If all goes well, teams will be able to reuse the cRIO, the modules, the bumpers, the digital side car, the power distribution board, the drivers station and a number of other items. We hope to keep costs down and reduce the impact manufacturing, shipping and scrapping these items has on our environment. With more than 1700 teams expected to participate this year, we can make a big difference with this small change in policy.
Above is a post from Bill’s blog. Our team is attending 3 events if we have to cut the ring connectors off of the battery cables everytime we enter a new event we are being very wasteful. If we take 6 batteries to competition we will have used 12 before regional 1, 12 at regional 1, 12 at regional 2 and 12 more at regional 3 as well as 12 more when we get home for a total of 60 ring connectors. Hopefully the GDC will make an exception for batteries or hopefully I am misunderstanding the problem.
p.s. I may be purchasing ring connector stock anyone know any good suppliers.
And the moral of the story is don’t make assumptions. You made an assumption now you have to pay for it. Consider this a life lesson.
I don’t believe this is reasonably logical. It flies in the face of years and years of competitions and what has been legal in the past. This is rules lawyering at it’s worst - literal interpretation of the rules without regard to intent.
And yet the competition changes so what made you think that what has been legal for years and years is legal this year.
FIRST and GDC can only make rulings if teams exist to be ruled upon. I am with you on waiting it out for today. If this decision making process continues, then I am not sure if it is even worth competing since all of us are going to be busy attempting to comply with ridiculous rules anyway. On another note - Shipping lots of batteries in the crate can be EXPENSIVE and break the budget. Isn’t there any regard for that?
I think you misunderstand the problem…as long as you have enough weight allowance to bring your terminated battery cable assemblies in, separate from your batteries, you should not need to do any of that.
No “system” is going to be broken one way or the other here. However, last week I had two students spend 3 hours getting all of our battery cables to the right length and bolted properly and securely in the correct orientation, then insulated appropriately. I’m really not “feeling the vibe” for having to take them apart before our week one comp and putting them back together, just for the sake of walking through a door. It would indeed have been nice to know this sooner, I would have shipped all batteries with the crate and paid the overage. Wouldn’t it be safer having teams show up with properly connected and insulated cables using the Andymark plastic plugs instead of having all teams needing to connect cables on batteries … some fully charged …in the pits???
I imagined that the 40 pound allowance might cause a few issues getting into an event and because of that we shipped the robot and controls in the crate. However, this is not something I anticipated at all. I hope there’s time for folks to revisit this one.
Are you suggesting that everyone needs to have every decision they make that is not explicitly allowed by the rules approved by the GDC?
My thought process (I imagine 125 went through a similar process) for keeping our batteries in our shop was as follows:
- We have reasons that make it beneficial to keep the batteries (testing, can be fully charged upon arrival, etc.)
- We are within 20 min. of our regional and will easily be able to transport the batteries in minivans and/or pickup trucks that will be part of our caravan.
- The definitions that would apply to this situation are identical to those in previous manuals.
- In previous years batteries could be brought to competitions without counting as part of our allowance of Fabricated Parts.
- Section 4 of the manual states that batteries do not have to be shipped with the robot and makes no mention of them being part of the Withholding Allowance.
You always have to make assumptions at some point, you will never have perfect information. The goal is to get enough information so that the assumptions have the greatest chance of being correct. If you see a major flaw in my thought process or feel that a reasonable person would review the objective statements I have made and come to the conclusion that the batteries should be shipped I would be interested to hear about it.
When the rules explicitly state that the batteries DO NOT need to be shipped with the robot, it is then IMPLICIT that they are allowed to be brought in in unlimited quantities. Also, as vikesrock said, all the rules pertaining to this have NOT changed since at least 2007. If it was allowed then, even if it WAS ‘against’ the rules, precedent says it should be allowed now, because the rules were not modified in such a way that it was EXPLICITLY illegal.