NI roboRIO

[taichichuan]

Yes, as Greg indicates, we're using two wires that we twisted together (they were our only source of yellow and green colored wires to match the coloring of the connectors ;-). So far, everything is working with the PCM and the PDB on CAN. The WPIlib interface for the PCM makes the use of CAN pretty transparent. The CAN in these units is "fail thru" which means that a failed component doesn't break the bus. So, unlike the Jags, if a component fails on the CAN bus, the rest of the bus is still active.

We're eagerly awaiting the new Talon SRX CAN-based motor controllers. Using CAN can certainly simplify the wiring of the bot. With the fail-thru behavior, we should be able to keep going even if a motor controller toasts for some reason!