I know the idea of an extension for the batteries comes up often, and I agree that not having one is a good way to promote problem solving. The issue I have is constant damage to plugs on power expander’s and cortex controllers from the repeated plugging and un-plugging of batteries. We have even lost matches due to bad connectors. What I would like to see is a short pigtail even if it only had 1/2" of wire between the connectors to help protect the plugs on more expensive items. If VEX doesn’t want to produce them due to it being a potential money loser I would at least like to see the rules changed to allow such an item to be made and used by the team. A simple part made with $5.00 worth of parts from Radio Shack would have potentially kept us from losing at least 8 matches this year or at least kept us functioning to compete the entire match.
Arguing that not having battery extenders promotes problem solving is like arguing that lacking high-strength motors promotes problem solving. Just because a product makes a robot more efficient and/or competitive does not mean it stymies growth in creativity and robot building abilitiy.
This proposed new part would be more of a quality of life upgrade than anything. It wouldn’t be nearly as drastic a change as the introduction of high-strength motors was.
I wouldn’t call it a quality of life issue, I would call it a preventing unneeded wear to expensive components. I would rather spend what little money we have on more metal, and sensors than replace expensive items like the cortex or have a robot functioning on half of it’s motors because a power expander had a bad connector and there was no time to replace it before a match.
In the years I worked in industrial engineering workstations had to be designed around fixed values, and a fixed length battery cable would fall into that category in my own opinion. I have only been involved with the design and building of 3 robots so far, but the battery placement was considered during the design process and not an afterthought. The $300.00 we have spent due to bad connectors would have bought a lot of items we ended up doing without.
What did you have to spend $300 on? If the cortex connector was bad/damaged it is repairable.
The cortex quit a day before a match and we didn’t have time to trouble shoot it. Living 30 minutes from IFI sometimes is a bad thing when it comes to rash decisions :eek: Again, we ordered a power expander online before we took our malfunctioning one out for Eli to look at. Now we have some spare parts which will be good since we hope to have a few more team members and hopefully at least one more robot next year.
While we can only blame ourselves for not trouble shooting before buying replacements, both cases would have been avoided if something such as a pigtale existed. Not to mention it would be an easy fix during an event.
I have made some pigtales to use while we practice, so at least I have cut down on some of the abuse.