I have a question on connectons

[mikets]

Depends on what kind of signals the sensor is sending. If the sensor is sending analog signals (i.e. voltage variations), then could be 2 or 3 pins (depending on if it needs power from the 5V pin). The gyro supplied by FIRST is such an analog device and it needs power from the 5V pin, so it has a 3-pin connector to an analog channel (5V, sig, Gnd). If the sensor is a switch, then it only needs 2 pins from the Digital input channel (sig and Gnd). The accelerometer, however, is a more complex device. Since it has 3-axes, it could use 3 analog channels but the one supplied by FIRST is using I2C interface which is a 4-pin serial interface communicating with the I2C protocol. Some versions of encoders use 2 digital input chanels so they have two 3-pin connectors on the cRIO end and a 4-pin connector on the encoder end. If you connect the encoder to the Jaguar then it is a 4 or 5 pin connector. So yes, we make connectors depending on what the sensor needs. For the gyro, we solder 3 header pins onto the gyro board so that we can disconnect it easily on either ends.