I asked the same question to Jason about 2 weeks ago mine was about boxbot

if its a normal robot with no extra's

if i just use the complete kit and don't add any extra's can you estimate a period of how long it will last

do i have to charge it or does it have batteries

The complete kit does not come with batteries it is your option if you want to put recharchable batteries or normal battries and for post number 4 again it depends on you. If your robot is dancing than it will use more power than just going forward but it should last about on hour roughly.

thanks

Hard to tell depends on many factors... But you can do some math to find out... measure how much power your robot is using by hooking up a multimeter to your robot...Mutimeter tutorial So say your robot uses 400mAh and your battery is a 1300mA lipo...

Formula is 1300/400 = 3.25..... So in roughly your battery should give you about 3 hours run time.... However, in the real world it probably be less than that.... Bottom line the above example will give you a rough idea anyway....

What part of South Africa do you stay in

As Richard said, it's all down to how long each device runs and if it's under load, and how many devices are attached, etc. etc. etc.

Work out or measure the running current. Divide your battery capacity by the running current to tell you how many hours it will run.

thanks for the advice on the mutimerter richard.r. i will definetly use it another time but i was talking about the battery holder that comes with the complete kit and mohamed.r answered it first.

i do not have my complete kit yet and wanted to know how long it will last so i would know whether or not to buy a bigger battery

Mohamed's answer was inconclusive and didn't answer anything about working out how long a batteries charge will last. Richard's advice is what you need to follow in order to find the answer to your question.

Rich he asked about the 6 AA batteries in the developers kit and 2 weeks ago I asked Jason the same question on email this was exact response.I will copy and paste the email

6x AA batteries should last roughly an hour with full use. It really depends on how much power is being used (if the robot is using all functions or few functions at one time)

Just saying Richard's advice is the better advice to follow since it will help with any battery on any kit.

Even AA batteries have different capacities, I have 2500mAh and 2600mAh rechargeable and there are others out there too, the time something will last on these is going to differ, it will also differ depending on what is attached and the actual usage.

A robot built which is constantly using a servo to move a ping sensor left and right like in my Ping Roam script will draw more current than one where that servo is used to move an arm for instance. Using Richard's advice you can work out roughly the run time of the batteries used.

Stating that 6 AA batteries will last around an hour is not a conclusive answer. As Jason put in his reply to you "It really depends on how much power is being used".

The correct answer to the question asked here is what Richard posted. You need to measure or work out the running current and divide the battery capacity by the running current to find the run time of the batteries.

An example based on the AA batteries I mentioned above.

We work out that the robot is using an average 500mA while running. We have 2500mAh batteries 2500/500 = 5 hours

We use the 2600mAh batteries 2600/500 = 5.2 hours

We use cheaper 2000mAh batteries 2000/500 = 4 hours

There could be a difference of over an hour in run time depending on the brand of batteries used in the above example.

Always calculate these things, you cannot take someone else's results and use them for a different robot or a different supply.

At least make sure you use re-chargeable AAs.... Alkaline batteries no matter their capacity cannot deliver enough current at any give time... They will most definitey "brown out" your EZB and die rather quickly to boot... They are better suited for low power applications such as radios and wall clocks... You should really use a Lipo... but rechargeable nimh AAs will work well too (that is if your using the AA battery tray that comes with the developers kit, of course)