Thread: How does your team wire your Double Solenoids?
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Unread 05-02-2005, 01:05
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FRC #0701 (Robovikes)
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How does your team wire your Double Solenoids?
To wire up our double solenoids in past years we've followed the double diode trick found in the robot manual from 2003. It roughly sketches out that you take the gound leads from the solenoids and connect them together and hook them up to one side of a SPIKE (M-). Then attach a diode to one solenoid +V lead and attach another diode reversed to the other solenoid +V lead. Finally connect the ends of the diode together and attach to the other side of the SPIKE (M+). It seems to work, but we've encountered problems with the solenoids after a while. Does this diode trick work as I described?
It seems to me that it should take 4 diodes to ensure the polarity on the solenoid.

I heard that some teams connect the two ground leads from the solenoid directly to ground on the Fuse Panel and wire just the +V leads (separately with reversed diodes) to the SPIKE. So I'm wondering, how do other teams wire up the double solenoid to work off of one SPIKE?
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