New Talon Speed Controller

[Mike Copioli]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Is it possible to revert a Talon to factory calibration?

No it is not.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Mike Copioli

No it is not.

Mike, could it be done with a PWM signal generator which generates a known pulse width accurate to 0.001 ms ?

[Mike Copioli]

Originally Posted by Ether

Mike, could it be done with a PWM signal generator which generates a known pulse width accurate to 0.001 ms ?

No. Joe's questions was regarding factory calibration. These settings are what the firmware saves to flash when the Talon is first programmed. These settings are over written once the user performs a successful calibration.

A user calibration could be performed to obtain values that are are close or even the same as what's saved during initial programming. But there would be no way for the user to confirm this.

We did not feel the ability to restore factory calibration was necessary since the procedure would not be much different than performing a user calibration. And a user calibration will yield the best performance.

[nerdherdmember]

FRC 422 just received the first 8 of our Talons! They are far smaller than we imagined them to be.

[CalTran]

Team 2410 put four on our mecanum demo robot and man do they drive like a beauty! Makes driving off of our app so much smoother and easier. Me gusta mucho.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Makes driving off of our app so much smoother and easier.

Compared to what? (also, what does "off of our app" mean?)

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Ether

Compared to what? (also, what does "off of our app" mean?)

Compared to previously having 4 victors. Off our app means we put one of the robot open shields on it and one of our programmers wrote an app too driver the demo bot off a phone with

[Ether]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Compared to previously having 4 victors. Off our app means we put one of the robot open shields on it and one of our programmers wrote an app too driver the demo bot off a phone with

Were you driving the Victors "off the app" too? ... so that you were comparing apples to apples?

[CalTran]

Yeah we were driving the Victors off the app as well. The Talons just seemed more responsive. I will admit it was not a blind study so maybe its just the hyper behind the Talons that makes it seem so

[Ether]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Yeah we were driving the Victors off the app as well. The Talons just seemed more responsive. I will admit it was not a blind study so maybe its just the hyper behind the Talons that makes it seem so

I'm thinking it's probably the linearity of the Talons which made the difference you noticed.

But as you said, it would be most interesting to conduct a blind study.

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Ether

I'm thinking it's probably the linearity of the Talons which made the difference you noticed.

But as you said, it would be most interesting to conduct a blind study.

That'd be what, set up a few identical drivebases and make it "impossible" to see into what controllers are on them, then have a drive drive the three and rank how well they handle?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by CalTran

That'd be what, set up a few identical drivebases and make it "impossible" to see into what controllers are on them, then have a drive drive the three and rank how well they handle?

To save parts and ensure there are no mechanical differences, I would use the same drive base. Build a simple electrical board for it, but leave off the speed controllers. Put the speed controllers into separate boxes (even cardboard boxes would do for this), with a wiring harness coming out of it (wired up the same way for each case, so controlling the motors is identical). Close the boxes. Strap each one onto the robot sequentially, and hook up the wiring harness. Drive it around, and do an evaluation. Take the next box, and repeat.

For best results, use 3 identical boxes. After it's built, have someone randomly shuffle the boxes, then number them as you use them. That way, you won't know which is which until after your evaluation, when you open them up and compare the number to whats inside!