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Re: Potentiometer vs. Encoder
I did not see anyone mentioning other issues in actually implementing and wiring these sensors such as noise on encoder digital signals. Or, the issues with poor quality data if the reflective encoder wheel on a KOP encoder is not properly aligned. I was not on the team last year, but I do know the team had a lot of trouble trying to get encoders to work reliably and gave up and used a potentiometer. They did not need high speed position sensing and some analog filtering gave good results with a potentiometer. Noise on the encoder by comparison was producing position drift over time.
From what I can see from last years robot I understand the problems. The team was short handed mentor wise for a while and the team lost some key skills. We are still trying to re-build the level of electrical knowledge and construction skills to use more components properly. But it is no surprise without enough time for training that they had reliability issues last year with encoders. We are trying to learn and address the skills needed to be successful this year. Even if we do, there are some students who still think encoders are unreliable. At least the ones we can get from FIRST Choice.
Bottom line. If you really let the students do the construction and most of the debugging, than you may have to let them select parts based on their current abilities and comfort level, and not just the technical merits. I think our team has the skills this year in SW, HW, and assembly, to have a wider choice in sensor use. But in the short build season, you may need to make other tradeoffs if enough experience with these components is not already present.
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