Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Cost and Complexity for the end user? A relay is a lot easier to use than an ESC if all you need is forward/stop/reverse.
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I'll grant you cost, with the Victor SR being $25 more than the Spike. I'm pretty doubtful on complexity of the robot itself. (A Victor SR is obviously internally more complex than a Spike.) The Spike is somewhat different from all the speed controllers mechanically, programmatically, and electrically (with that 20A fuse to think about). So I disagree with your position that a robot with two rather different kinds of motor controllers on it is simpler than a robot with only one type of motor controller. Especially since I've seen our novice programmers get somewhat confused by the difference between relays and speed controllers in C++.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jared
Driving solenoid valves, driving solenoid actuators, powering lights, saving money, and using parts you already have.
I still don't like the 4 relay ports on the roboRIO because we've used more than four relays multiple times. It seems kind of silly to me that we downgraded from a maximum of 16 relays to 4 on the new controller, considering the driving circuitry for the relays is probably not too complicated.
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See below. With the Pneumatics Control Module, all your solenoid valves and compressors are taken care of. That leaves solenoid actuators and lights. And I wouldn't be surprised if the GDC treated the PCM like the solenoid breakout and let you power solenoid actuators from it. So lights. Which you could drive from a Victor SR if you wanted, actually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Ross
With the 2015 control system, the Pneumatics Control Module (PCM) drives the compressor directly. That accounts for 90% of the uses of spikes we've had over the years.
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I'll ditto this. We've only used Spikes for compressors or really small loads that I just didn't want to find room for a Jaguar for. Now it's a Spike that I'd have to find room for.