Talon SR vs Talon SRX vs New Victor vs Spark

[gerthworm]

One other consideration we had this year:


1) CAN enables you to do a lot more (we especially like the current draw measurement of the SRX's), but with a daisy-chained architecture could also be a liability - if your CAN cable comes unplugged from the RIO, your whole robot is dead.

Our general philosophy of recent year(s) has been PWM-style controllers for drivetrain (where you need lots of raw super reliable power) and SRX/CAN controllers for things like shooter motors or arms which need finer control. Just a rule of thumb, though...

Updates after talking to our electrical lead:

1) I was mistaken, Spark controllers were not known to have an issue. SD540's did have a low-voltage interesting behavior, but that was fixed in the B revision.
2) PWM controllers are also much lower cost. In reality, that's what would drive us to use them unless there is a sensor associated with that particular mechanism.

[Drakxii]

We used the Talon SRX they have some nice upsides, just two things I didn't like. The reset button is a little big and some of them got stuck on our bot. Also I wished they had a version for terminal studs, instead of everything being soldered in place.

Ideally you would use the Talon SRX where you need the PIDF controllers and then Sparks or TalonSR everywhere else.

[gerthworm]

Originally Posted by Ether

I think you may be confusing the Spark with a completely different motor controller.

Updated, you are correct. Thank you for helping me catch that.

[GreyingJay]

Just a little note about the Talon SRX - if you use them in CAN mode, you need to pre-program them with a CAN ID.

"Well, duh", you are saying.

Well... on our testbed, we wired the Talon SRX in PWM mode and made sure things worked. Then we moved them onto the competition robot, electing to rewire them in CAN configuration.

Everything was forgotten until 20 minutes before midnight on Bag and Tag day, when we were scrambling to finish the robot, and write some simple test code to make sure it would work.

CANTalon intakeLeft = new CANTalon(

"Hey, does anyone remember what CAN ID the --- oh. Oops."

We ended up programming their CAN ID's at our first competition.