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Unread 12-12-2012, 13:05
kaliken kaliken is offline
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Re: New Talon Speed Controller

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Copioli View Post
The questions I have for the FIRST community are: What would you be willing to pay for a CAN enabled motor controller that had a footprint slightly larger than the Talon? Second would the increase in footprint make the Talon less desirable for PWM users?

After all it is your support that would make all of this possible. We appreciate your patronage and feedback.
Seeing this part of the thread made my eyes light up...

As one of the few 10% who use CAN and have been using CAN since our championship year in 2010, I would be all for this.

However its not the interface in which we are looking a rather it is the data and the bidirectional functionality that makes us use Jags. Even though Jags are 'big and fat' compared to the Talon/Victor, the fact that we can pull a ton of telemetry off the Jag plus do a simple PID (a nice addition.) is what separates it from the Victor/Talon. In 2010 we were using current feedback from the Jag to identify if we had a ball or not. Essentially we got a lot more versatility off the Jag/CAN bus other than just commanding motors.

In addition, one interesting thought would be a redundant control path. Since most teams stay away from CAN due to potential reliability problems(only year we had an issue was traced to a 775 case short) What would the prospects be to putting a redundant PWM/CAN interface ie. if CAN messages die, the motor controller can still be controlled via PWM. (disclaimer.. I work in the space industry so redundant paths are usually a must)

Bottom line, if you could put a talon with CAN + similar telemetry data in a better form factor, (even with a larger footprint) I would jumping and singing for joy. Oh yeah also make the hole spacing a nice number!
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