blog; Motor Controller Options for 2015

[Travis Covington]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Attn Paul and friends at IFI and CTRE.

How long are the wires on these things?

I'd pay an extra $10 per unit if the wires were something like 4 feet long, at least on the input and especially PWM wires. Can we make this an option?

Team 254 has the same feelings. While we will likely put it nice and close to the PDB, it never hurts to have extra wire just in case. We do NOT want to have to splice in a wire to go to the PDB ever. The longer PWM would also allow us some breathing room when we inevitably re-terminate the ends once installed on the robot.

On the whole though, seriously no complaints on the form factor. Lots of awesome changes here.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

Team 254 has the same feelings. While we will likely put it nice and close to the PDB, it never hurts to have extra wire just in case. We do NOT want to have to splice in a wire to go to the PDB ever. The longer PWM would also allow us some breathing room when we inevitably re-terminate the ends once installed on the robot.

On the whole though, seriously no complaints on the form factor. Lots of awesome changes here.

Now that we don't really need access to them anymore, other than the lights. I'm pretty sure we're going to find a way to mount a lot of them directly under the PD panel and just run the short wires right up to the panel. Having a little more wire would be nice though.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

The high strand count Power Input/Motor Output leads appear to be 400 strand.
Nice and flexible.

That's a huge bonus for people trying to thread it around stuff. It's a shame that small rolls are so expensive.

Some other posts about Andersen power poles, I've used them for years in all sorts of conditions and never had a failure on properly crimped connections. Just buy the tool and use it. And there is a ton of connector colors. You can still meet the black /red wires that the inspectors like, but color code the connections.

I'm not sure on the request for 4 foot leads, but 1 foot on the power side would let you make a neat install with the new PDU. 5 inches isn't much to work with.

Thanks FIRST, it's August and we all know about a change, love this new open info flow!!

[Dale]

I know it would double the number of SKUs but I would pay another $5 to have the option of 3ft wires on them. Splicing all those wires doesn't seem like a swell idea from a reliability standpoint.

[BitTwiddler]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Now that we don't really need access to them anymore, other than the lights. I'm pretty sure we're going to find a way to mount a lot of them directly under the PD panel and just run the short wires right up to the panel. Having a little more wire would be nice though.

You'll still want access to the pushbutton to calibrate and change braking mode.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by BitTwiddler

You'll still want access to the pushbutton to calibrate and change braking mode.

I don't think we have had to recalibrate or change the braking mode on any of our speed controllers once we have installed them and they are working. We make the brake/coast decision early on and don't change it. With CAN I believe you will be able to do this in software anyway.

Are there CAD models without the wires? I tried downloading them myself and taking them out but it took forever for Solidworks to recognize features from the imported bodies and eventually crashed.

[Ty Tremblay]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Are there CAD models without the wires? I tried downloading them myself and taking them out but it took forever for Solidworks to recognize features from the imported bodies and eventually crashed.

You could just thicken the surfaces and then cut the wires off.

[Joe Ross]

I noticed that both the Victor 888 and Jaguar are no longer purchasable on the vex pro website. Does this mean that all stock has been depleted, or do you need to do a phone order?

[FrankJ]

I am a little surprised no one has pointed out the main advantage of the new controllers. Not even the most inapt can fill the controllers with hot melt while trying to secure the PWM cable.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I noticed that both the Victor 888 and Jaguar are no longer purchasable on the vex pro website. Does this mean that all stock has been depleted, or do you need to do a phone order?

All stock has been depleted of both products.

[headlight]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Are there CAD models without the wires? I tried downloading them myself and taking them out but it took forever for Solidworks to recognize features from the imported bodies and eventually crashed.

Yeah. You're almost NEVER going to get recognize features to work with surface models.

I cleaned up a model of the new victor (removed interior surfaces), and removed the wires. I have attached a Solidworks model and a step file. The step file should actually come in as a solid (because there aren't as many gaps/overlapping geometry, I think I got all of them). There might be minor loss of fidelity because it got re-saved into step before being re-imported.

Originally Posted by headlight

Yeah. You're almost NEVER going to get recognize features to work with surface models.

I cleaned up a model of the new victor (removed interior surfaces), and removed the wires. I have attached a Solidworks model and a step file. The step file should actually come in as a solid (because there aren't as many gaps/overlapping geometry, I think I got all of them). There might be minor loss of fidelity because it got re-saved into step before being re-imported.

Thank you very much!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I don't think we have had to recalibrate or change the braking mode on any of our speed controllers once we have installed them and they are working. We make the brake/coast decision early on and don't change it. With CAN I believe you will be able to do this in software anyway.

You might need the buttons accessible for the CAN models, depending on how they work out the CAN addressing. To address the Jaguars, you theoretically chained them together, then sent an address set command and pressed a button on the Jaguar you wanted to set. In practice, you usually had to individually connect to a Jag to set its address. Or to read its address, for that matter.

I'm hoping the Talon SRX will have a better system for this. I'd be super happy if they decided to go the typical industry route and have a pair of rotary switches for setting the address, so you can set/read-off IDs without power or connectivity. Software addressing is theoretically nice until you have to figure out which devices on your network have conflicting IDs through said malfunctioning network.

EDIT: Found the detailed drawings of the Talon SRX, and there aren't any addressing switches on there at the moment, alas.

[Mark McLeod]

Here is a height comparison shot.