SD540 Motor Controller

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by aldaeron

If you cannot afford buying a whole new set of controllers mid season, I would stay away from any of the new controllers (MS SD540 and REV spark).
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While there is always RISK in trying something new, I don't think it is correct to make a recommendation like this without data to back it up.

Speaking directly about the SPARK, we have done everything we can (including testing them on robots at numerous offseason events, on abusive test bed robots (6 cim - 2 speed drive train weighing 200+ lbs), abuse testing them at higher voltages and higher current, dumping piles of aluminum chips on them, static testing, etc) into it to make sure that it is a hardened controller ready for FRC prime time. The SPARK that is in production right now is actually our 3rd revision of the design, based on the feed back of the above testing. Every time we made a design change we continued trying to break the controller until we felt that it would be WAY out of reach of teams breaking them.

As someone who has been involved with FIRST for 14 seasons, on numerous teams with many blue banners, making sure the SPARK was bullet proof was at the top of our priority list when developing it. We would not have launched the product if I didn't feel 100% comfortable putting them on my own team's robot. 2848 will defiantly be using SPARKs this year (and we are a team that can easily afford talon SRX's everywhere).

We check 100% of our motor controllers at 50 AMPS load on our production line. All that being said if a team does fine an issue we will stand behind it's performance. If any team has any problems with a SPARK, that are not user caused (ours will die in the same way that the talon, victor, and SD540 will from reverse polarity, or wrong hookup) we will replace them.

We designed this motor controller to be low cost so that we could help Rookie teams and those who have budget issues each year, that doesn't mean that we designed it with any less performance than the other controllers on the market.

TL: DR Teams should not have any reservations choosing the SPARK for 2016.