we had this same issue a few years ago - we settled on one brand of replaceable batteries - we went with energizers which we switch out right before every run during the tournament.

One reason is that the discharge curve drops off pretty severely after a short while - also the rechargeable batteries have less and less staying capacity as we go along.  

We also run the robot a few times through its program set before the competition round - takes the edge off the discharge curve. Here's the AA discharge curve that backs up my thinking:



On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 5:44 AM, John Davison <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
As part of our rookie lessons learned for next season, does anyone have thoughts about the pros and cons of using rechargeable vs. regular batteries?  Early on, we found that our robot performance varied quite a bit based on how fresh the batteries were, and we seemed to be burning through lots of regular batteries.  So we switched to rechargeable batteries soon before the competition, but then had to tweak our programming because the output of rechargeable batteries is different from regular batteries!  If we stick with rechargeable batteries for our next robot design, are there any potential problems or downside that others have experienced?

John Davison

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