[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by NyCityKId

So for most teams its "panic now" time and it just really hit me that my team is using 9 motors in all for our robot (4 for drive and 5 for the arm). I was wondering if any other team was using 9 or more motors. Because right now I'm having nightmares of of the 120 amp APP CB tripping . I would feel a lot better if there are other teams using 9 or more motors.

Whether or not one trips the 120 amp breaker has far more to do with how the motors are being used, and particularly how many of them are being simultaneously operated near stall, rather than the total number of motors.

Nine motors is more than average, but not particularly unusual for a robot which is more complicated than typical.

Our team has traditionally used more than an average number of motors, but 9 seems like it will be fairly typical this year. We are currently planning for 10 motors this year. However, more motors doesn't necessarily mean a better robot -- we managed to use only 3 motors on a very successful robot in 2008.

Our past history:

• 2005 - 8 motors
• 2006 - 11 motors
• 2007 - 7 motors
• 2008 - 3 Motors (Speed Racer) or 5 motors (Fezzik)
• 2009 - 7 motors
• 2010 - 7 motors (all controlled via Jaguars with CAN)
• 2011 - 10 motors (all controlled via Jaguars with CAN)

My concern this year is actually with controlling 10 motors on a single CAN bus. We had success with 7 motors on CAN last year, but know of other teams that had trouble getting reliable CAN operation with so many devices. We're hoping that the new firmware changes since last year will make 10 CAN devices within the realm of possibility this year.