[Mike9966]

Hi all, Just had to throw my 2¢ in on this one.

As someone said, the powerpoles are a gift from God! lol, True, you do have to shell out $40 for a nice crimper, and you do have to train the students on how to use it, but once this is done, life is good.
Yes, do zip tie them if you are worried about them separating, one small one laterally does the trick.
We put these on all our SRX's pretty much straight away when they come in.

Someone mentioned confusing the input and output. Our method is to use Red/Black on the input (anything that's always hot), and Pink/Black on the control side. Motors get Pink/Black too, that way you should only ever see pink to pink, and red to red. Pretty simple.

I don't like deans due to the exposed contacts, and soldering necessary.

We use latching polarized (like the Hansen hobbies ones) that we buy from Digikey. Again, when the SRX's come in we put one male, and one female on each unit. I like to use the 3 pin ones so the connections can be used for either can or PWM.

The Coaxial barrel jacks are awful and should be banned! True, you can zip tie them down, but what a pain, just bad all the way around.

The worst connectors bar none though are the stick pin headers on the roborio. There is nothing to tie things down with, one has to add sticky squares and so on, and even then we had one or two pop out this year after doing the dukes of hazard thing over the chevys. Grin.

I'm not in favor of spring cage clamps as in the PDP and elsewhere, screw cage clamps would be my preference.
Space, and student strength are the main problems here.

Faston (spade, aka bladed, etc) I don't like as the nylon shrouded females frequently aren't pushed properly onto the male side. The male blade ends up between the plastic and the connector. (and then falls off).

Don't like JST, too small and fragile.

Screw terminals are ok, we used them on Jag's for years, but I'd prefer a built in power pole connector, not the flying leads on the SRX.

Mostly one has to simply do a good job with any of these and they will serve you well if they are used for what they are meant for.

One final thought, use good wire! Not something stiff as a board, or the wrong size!

Have a good one, and don't forget to pull test EVERYTHING.

Mike