NXT battery

[Tom Mosher]

Originally Posted by timdavid

The last few years, our team has used two robots, one with the rechargeable battery pack, and one using disposable lithium batteries. It's actually nice to have the two robots using different battery sources, because it helps point out which mission solutions are most susceptible to issues with different power levels. Introducing variability at the practice field helps prepare you for variability at the tournament.

Good idea, including some low-battery test runs early in the development process would be a good way to promote robust mission programming. Keeping a set of almost-empty AA's around would be helpful.

[timdavid]

Originally Posted by Tom Mosher

Good idea, including some low-battery test runs early in the development process would be a good way to promote robust mission programming. Keeping a set of almost-empty AA's around would be helpful.

That's the general concept, though I would suggest avoid trying almost empty batteries. When the batteries get too low, our experience has been the robot fails to do almost anything right, and you can't really design your missions to work in that state. Instead, test your robot with brand new lithium batteries (displays a battery level of around 10V), and moderately discharged DC rechargeable battery pack (around 8V). That's more than enough of a power difference to impact robot movements, but the robot won't totally fail or stall out on some movements.