Maybe some of you might be interested in this.
Vex support said 9.6v was ok , but haven’t seen a spec.
It works fine on my joystick.
Is this “mod” legal for competition?
theres no rule saying its not is there?
Replace the mentions of a 7.2V battery with a 9.6V battery.
From that answer its legal right?
Using dead batteries for this setup is potentially dangerous and a bad idea. They could leak, corroding the battery terminals and ruining your controller.
I don’t see why you couldn’t clip / solder / tape the leads from the wires directly to the positive and negative terminals inside the Vexnet controller though.
Read the link, you CAN’T modify the controller itself in any way. If you’re taping/soldering/clipping the leads on, that could be seen as addition to the controller and thus modification - might get frowned upon, whereas if you’re adding to the batteries, you’re not touching the controller in any way.
Clipping a wire to a battery lead to me is no different than rubber banding a battery to the back of the controller - and you need to do that with either battery mod.
I’d probably personally make a AAA-sized spacer out of plastic on a lathe and solder the end of the wire to a piece of metal on the end of said spacer. That way you get the spacing and the removable assembly of the AAA batteries but without the risk of leaking battery acid.
Vex has a programming port power input on the burner according to Paul Copioli
“- Battery power. We will be coming out with something for the battery power. Most likely, it will be a wall adapter that connects directly to the program port. This allows our classroom users to drive the robots during the long school day without dealing with the battery issue. In addition, we will be coming out with a new programming cable that will also power the joystick during programming and debugging.”
Quoted from Vexnet Joystick Stuff | Vamfun's Blog
Read my response.
Some have had trouble with the wires interfering with the USB Adapter. Using wire gauge smaller than pwm wire and routing through the screw hole works fine. Make sure that it is insulated and stranded wire.
