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Unread 19-02-2016, 12:57
thatnameistaken thatnameistaken is offline
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AKA: Joshua Johnston
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Re: Wiring Multiple PCMs

Quote:
Originally Posted by alambert14 View Post
Our team is using lots of pneumatics this year, enough that we need 2 PCMs on the robot. There was not enough room on the power distribution board to wire 2 PCMs and a VRM, so we split the wires for one to power both of the PCMs, which may be problematic considering most people say that each PCM has to be on its own circuit.

However, even if we can power them both, we do not know how we would wire the CAN wires to the power distribution board, considering there are only two spots to connect CAN wires (one for the roboRIO and another free one). We can't split those wires because we need to talk to each PCM individually with the code.

If any of you guys have been able to pull this off, could you let us know how you wired it? Worst case scenario we can always get rid of two of our solenoids and split the air instead (bringing us back down to 1 PCM), but we would really like to have 2. Thanks!
As a team that's using two PCMs, I can tell you that powering them on seperate circuits is required by the rules (on mobile so I can't quote the specific one but trust me.) We're wiring the second PCM to one of the smaller wago ports on the PDP with a 20 amp breaker, which I believe is the only legal way to do it.

As for CAN, it's a bus. Wire from the roboRIO to the first pair of ports on 1 PCM, use the second pair of ports to wire to the second PCM, which then goes to the PDP.