Safe Method for Purposeful Brown-out

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Another oddball way to to this if you don't need too many amps for your test is to set up a motor controller (controlled by an arduino or separate RIO) to provide voltage for the the cRIO. Just don't try to drive it backwards...

I don't know how the RoboRIO will respond to a pulsed output like that of a speed controller, and I'm not sure I want to know.

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

I don't know how the RoboRIO will respond to a pulsed output like that of a speed controller, and I'm not sure I want to know.

Yea, this is a bad idea. One of our mentors connected a motor controller up to another motor controller. The second one blew up pretty fast.

The very low impedance MOSFETs in the motor controller will rapidly switch between 12v and 0v continually. This will cause large, fast, voltage changes across the input capacitors on the roboRIO. That will cause them to heat up and blow up.