CAN vs PWM

[Radical Pi]

We used CAN last year, and though it's a little temperamental, when it works it works well.

Be warned, our problems included difficulty in making the cables, a higher sensitivity to slowdowns in your robot code (We cannot safely enable the bot until the camera feed starts at the driver station), jags randomly resetting their IDs (this has been fixed), and under last year's code the system cannot handle more than 2 jaguars being unpowered (if all goes well that won't be a problem again this year).

On the plus side, the wiring is infinitely simpler with CAN (assuming you can make the cables), as there is only one wire going to the cRIO. I also would have been gutted by the drive team if I pulled the robot apart trying to get at the two jags which power our kicker so I could switch the coast/brake jumper on the day before shipping (true story). Instead, I was able to override it through code. And if there are any problems, you can quickly plug the bus into a computer and check if any jags are not operating properly.

Overall the decision of if to switch should be based on whether you have a use for the extra abilities of the CAN bus and whether you can devote the resources to the problems that will most likely arise from the bus.

disclaimer: I'm a C++ programmer so I may have a different experience with the CAN bus than the LV teams