[FRC Blog] 2015 Control System and Kit of Parts Survey

[magnets]

Originally Posted by Jefferson

I'm not sure how it's "way more complicated than it needs to be". It has power, pressure switch, and CAN bus inputs. And compressor and solenoid outputs. It's as dead simple as it can be.
And, you're talking about using $140 in spikes to avoid buying a $90 board that can power twice as many solenoids.

I charge my pneumatics with a relay that is many years old. I buy a single $34.95 relay for shifting. I would not like to purchase $180 worth of pneumatics boards, instead, I would like to purchase 1 new spike relay for use on the competition robot, and use an older relay for our practice robot. That is spending 5 times as much money to accomplish the same task. In my personal opinion, providing CAN functionality to the pneumatics board is too complicated.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by magnets

I charge my pneumatics with a relay that is many years old. I buy a single $34.95 relay for shifting. I would not like to purchase $180 worth of pneumatics boards, instead, I would like to purchase 1 new spike relay for use on the competition robot, and use an older relay for our practice robot. That is spending 5 times as much money to accomplish the same task. In my personal opinion, providing CAN functionality to the pneumatics board is too complicated.

Then use a spike relay off one of the relay ports. If you feel you need more than 4 spikes, some of the general purpose digital i/o can be set up to run relays (probably).

[magnets]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Then use a spike relay off one of the relay ports. If you feel you need more than 4 spikes, some of the general purpose digital i/o can be set up to run relays (probably).

I was told at St. Louis that we would not be able to use the normal I/O for the relays. They did say that the setup they had there was not the final one, so the new one might be able to do that.

[Jefferson]

Originally Posted by magnets

I charge my pneumatics with a relay that is many years old. I buy a single $34.95 relay for shifting. I would not like to purchase $180 worth of pneumatics boards, instead, I would like to purchase 1 new spike relay for use on the competition robot, and use an older relay for our practice robot. That is spending 5 times as much money to accomplish the same task. In my personal opinion, providing CAN functionality to the pneumatics board is too complicated.

Ah. I see what you are saying.

I'd say you are in the minority in using pneumatics, not wanting to use a PCM, and using more than 2 relays. NI / CTRE built the system for the majority of users and yours seems like a pretty signicant edge case.

CAN on the PCM is 2 wires using reliable connectors and the programmer is blind to its application. Not really complicated.

[FrankJ]

Without reading the 2015 rules, you will not know if you can run the compressor with a spike or if you will have to use the compressor port.