Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto
Just another point for all those considering these two options.
Having the existing wire on the Victor SP is a nice time-saver if you plan out your electronics layout properly. You should be locating your speed controllers near the PDP regardless, and sending the existing Victor SP input wires straight to the PDP saves a lot of crimping and heatshrink time!
I'd like to share our experience:
We always wire our robots on the 3rd weekend of build season. It took us two full 12 hour days to do this in 2014 with the old Talon (pre-SRX). We saved a lot of time in 2015 using the Victor SP due to the pre-existing 10 gauge wire, it only took our electrical team a day and a half (8 hour days this time!) to wire two full robots. This is partly due to the saved time on not using fork crimps and heat shrink anymore. The new control system (roborio) helped as well.
We are building three robots this year. Wiring all three robots this weekend will be a challenge, but using Victor SP's exclusively will save us valuable time to accomplish our scheduled objectives!
Good luck everyone!
-Mike
Edit: How could I forget, we don't bother crimping our own PWM cables anymore, and we don't have to hot-glue the PWM cable into the speed controller anymore. The integrated PWM cable is another huge time saver for us!
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Do y'all use Anderson PowerPoles?
In a host of bad decisions last season, the one right thing I know I pushed for was establishing a stock of SRXs before the 2015 season and committing to the whole CAN system at the outset. We are able to crimp every single wire off the SRX with the powerpole connectors, making everyone's life easier. The 10-pin breakout and CAN monitoring on the whole system is insanely cool and I know we've only scratched the surface.
I'd say that if you are a team with the funds to justify it, move to the SPs or SRXs (I'd definitely say SRXs) for your competition robots. If you are a team that doesn't feel comfortable springing for them, make sure you exhaust available avenues for free motor controllers (You could haul in a LOT of free motor controllers this year if you wanted) I'd probably move to the Spark. Any kinds of projects we execute in the future would probably involve the adequately cleaned cheese ball jar filled with Talons and SRs first, but the Spark is a great value for anyone.
What is pretty apparent is that it's really hard to go wrong with motor controllers in FRC, a far cry from older days. I imagine trying to fit a Jaguar on a board now would feel like trying to cram a 1-bedroom apartment under the low bar. Motor controllers are probably the most obvious example of a lot of really great FRC mentors able to bring their industry experience and FIRST passion to a very captive audience. CTRE especially has earned every dollar they have gotten from us.
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I really love motor controllers.