Hello, I was wondering if my team would be allowed to fill tanks with compressed air in pits and use that same air through the competition, still having a compressor attached to the robot though, we prefer doing this because our compressor has really been draining the energy from the battery. If this is not possible, what else could we do? How have other teams managed this issue?
You must use the compressor on the robot and only the compressor on the robot to fill your tanks. However, you can change the battery right after you prefill using that compressor, before you go to the field for your match.
I suppose the answer to your question is yes, but also, why?
You can precharge your pneumatics in the pits or in queue before your match with the on board and legal compressor but disable the compressor for the match. I don’t really know why you would want to do this, but I don’t see why you couldn’t. Your compressor should not be draining your battery so quickly that you notice the power drain during a match (roughly 2 minutes). It sounds to me like you have some ghosts in the electrical system there or you are using old worn out batteries. I would really look hard for shorts or exposed conductor in your electrical system, especially in the pneumatics portions if you’re only having this problem while running your compressor.
The other possibility I see from this is that you have a massive leak in the pneumatics which is causing a 100% duty cycle for the compressor. This is also a problem you’ll want to sort out whether you run the compressor mid match or not since you will still run our of precharged air pretty quickly in the match with such a leak.