This Smart Battery Charger is capable of charging up to eight Ni-MH or Ni-Cd rechargeable AA or AAA batteries. Smart Charger technology provides automatic trickle charging and temperature cutoff during the charge cycle while LEDs provide user feedback on the status of each charging battery.
Specs show a 1.2 V output, and a capacity of 850 mAh. Other brands of rechargeable NiMH AAA batteries have 1.25 V output and a capacity of 800-1000 mAh. Though “Regular”/“normal” (one use, non-rechargeable) Alkaline AAA batteries have a 1.5 V output and a capacity of 1000-1200 mAh. **So typically the “Regular”/“normal” (one use, non-rechargeable) batteries have a slightly higher output voltage, and usually a slightly higher capacity.
Note: You will want to check the specs of different brand names or the brand name that you are using, as some differ slightly.**
and the slope of the battery drain is also different
even though the 1.5v batteries have a higher charge at the start, they quickly loose that charge and it dips below the 1.2v mark
the nimh’s however, holds its charge for a bit more and just drops dead at the end
so it really doesn’t make that much of a difference
(and its also the joystick, so you wont need to run motors)
Buy LOTS of these batteries and chargers. DO NOT ASSUME that one set of batteries will cut it per controller. These joysticks eat battery life.
I would honestly advise every teams coach that is on the field to keep six charged batteries and a small screwdriver on his or her person always, just in case.
heck the screw-in back panel is so annoying we just leave it off!
the batteries dont out anyways
and when the batteries are low (red LED) you CANNOT PROGRAM THE ROBOT THROUGH IT!!
cant even remember how many afternoons were wasted because of that
darn cortex!! >.<
btw Smartkid, did you verify that the joysticks were indeed ±40?? (instead of the old ±10)
I’m not gonna lie, the ±40 was what PTD had to crop for our holonomic drive. Other teams should be able to get away with a bit less. I would say the actual amount is closer to ±35 or ±30, still quite a bit.
Someone has actually modded the new Joysticks to use the old battery and I believe it was approved in the Q&A for comp. use. Don’t quote me on this one!
its worse
-hard to reach the compartment
-need to buy a whole new set of batteries ALONG WITH new AAA chargers
-the batteries die frequently
-you cannot program through the joystick when the battery LED is RED (can still get 30 mins of driving out of a red battery though…)
i think the only reason they changes the battery type is because it fits in the new design
our other team has modded the joystick following the guide of the original person
and it works GREAT!
they used the small robot nimh batteries instead of the actual controller battery because it was easier to mount and they dont find any noticeable difference in the performance
the advantage is that there are 5 spare charges batteries at ALL TIMES
and we also have a bunch of chargers to charge that kind of battery.
It just seems like a waste/hack to me. Ignoring my tiny affiliation with VRI, I honestly dislike the new joystick. Just my opinion but I wanted either an actual PS3 controller (dear God it uses Bluetooth, whatever will we do!) or a slimed down version of the V.5 joystick.
Say what you about Bluetooth, the PS3 controller gets like an entire day of use out of one charge and Sony figured out how to deal with the annoying device pairing issues that always float around BT devices.
Meh, I’m wasting my time, I need to focus on getting into this university…
-Cody
