Talon SRX Magnetic Encoder Cable Issues

[GeeTwo]

If an encoder where drawing enough current from the motor controller to cause the motor a problem, it would almost certainly be releasing the magic smoke, melting insulation, or engaged in some other catastrophic failure.

I concur that noise in the encoder line is a much more likely cause of error. If you have a long wire harness with the encoder lines and the two power lines from the Talon to the motor all close to each other, there are several forms of cross talk than can get you, not to mention external sources. An alternative (or additional) solution to shielding the long cable would be to use a shorter encoder cable in the first place, by relocating the SRX to be closer to the encoder (probably on the turret). This would mean a longer CAN bus, but CAN is engineered to reduce noise, and to be more tolerant than most encoder counters. If you do this, don't forget to use twisted pairs for CAN!