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Unread 24-04-2012, 11:16
Tom Bottiglieri Tom Bottiglieri is offline
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FRC #0254 (The Cheesy Poofs)
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Re: TI and future Jaguars

All of these features sound cool, but in my opinion before any new feature is introduced we need to really take a stab at making the current offerings more robust. Jaguar failures have bit a number of teams I have associations with and probably many others.

Here's what another speed controller would need to do to make the Cheesy Poofs stop using Victors:
- Proven reliability
- A unit just as small, if not smaller.
- The ability to deliver ridiculously high amounts of current and withstand low voltages. We have popped the main breaker before our Victors stop working.
- Faster, asynchronous motor drive PWM (I hate the sound of crunching CIMs)
- A closed case would be nice. Metal chips are abundant.
- Proven reliability
- Proven reliability
... Repeat 100 times ...
- Proven reliability

As far as control signals go, CAN is a "nice to have". The first rev of CAN in FRC had some major bugs and for me the first impression there was enough to write it off. On top of that, these interfaces are very highly abstracted out at the software level. I don't see how a student benefits any more from writing (-1,1) into an abstracted CAN interface than they do with an abstracted PWM interface.
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