FTC Motor Controller Help Needed

[Kylewilson7]

My name is Kyle Wilson and I am on a highschool FTC team in San Antonio, Texas. We are a first year team and I noticed the limitation on the amount of motor controllers. We would really like to add another motor but I am currently at that max for motor controllers, we are using tank drive to move and I was wondering if it's legal, and/or possible to put both left side motors and both right side motors in one motor controller. I have very limited knowledge of how the electronic components work and would appreciate any advice on the subject. Thanks in advance.

Team 4868.

[Michael Coleman]

It is common practice for FTC teams to control two motors per channel on the motor controller [four motors per controller in total]. Be very careful to check the wire connections into the motor controller, it is a tight fit to connect two wires in the terminal block.

[Techhexium]

It is legal to double up to four motors per controller. I can't confirm this but I heard doing so 1)won't have a effect on battery life but 2)splits the voltage for each motor so that each motor runs twice as fast.

I do know that two motors connected to one channel will be recognized as just one motor in RobotC.

[bscharff]

Told ya :/

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Kyle,
The answer is yes. From the Tetrix website...
The HiTechnic DC Motor Controller for TETRIX® connects to an NXT Intelligent Brick sensor port and will enable you to control powerful DC gear motors for use with TETRIX robots. The controller has two H-bridge outputs to control the speed and direction of two DC gear motors and is designed to connect to the TETRIX hole pattern. A four-motor robot can also be built by paralleling two motors to one channel.

I hope this helps.