Quote:
Originally Posted by Ether
What was the bad experience?
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Like I said, I was not with the team last year. But from what I can tell they were having noise problems due possibly to low quality potentiometers or perhaps electrical noise on the low level analog signal being run through long unshielded cables. The team did not have access to the test equipment needed to fully understand the problem so they came away with a lack of trust for the components involved. I am hoping if we try again in the off season there will be time to give this technique more of a chance to work.
As a side note. The system that was having trouble was using a CAN interface to Jaguars that was also running a PID loop with potentiometer feedback. Because of the problems they encountered some members of the team do not want to use potentiometers, Jaguars, PID, or CAN this year. But many other teams have had great luck with CAN for example.
I believe that many of the problems encountered last year with CAN, PID, potentiometers, etc. may have been the result of poor construction skills coupled with inadequate debugging skills. But those issues are now getting attention. This summer I hope to show the team that with adequate attention to the required practices they can use CAN, and the Jaguars built in PID control features without issues, and with great advantage.