[FTC]: (FTC) Doubling motors on a controller

[Coach Doug]

The team is trying to determine how to wire our 8 motors with only using 3 controllers. We have a 4 motor tank drive set up so we are considering wiring up one side of 2 motors as motor 1 and the other bank of 2 motors as motor 2 on the controller.

Question: By wiring it this way - will each motor on a given side be provided the optimum power or did it get cut in half?
2nd question: Should we double the wires up to each pos/neg post on the controller or run the positive to the first motor, hook that motor negative to the positive of the 2nd motor, then 2nd motor neg to neg side of controller?

Appreciate some input please.

[wilsonmw04]

do not daisy chain the motors. Twist the two motor wires together and jam them into the positive and negative terminals. This is the only legal way to double up motors. The voltage drop is the same in this configuration so there will be no loss in power.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

The specification for the HiTechnic Motor controllers allow a maximum of two motors per output port.

You may use a larger wire to feed the motor controller DC power input under c2 below however if you keep wire runs short, you may not see any real advantage to going to a larger wire then #16. If you are using more than one motor controller, make the one that feeds four motors your first controller in line with the battery pack for best drive performance.

<R11> Part modification:

c. Motor power, power and encoder wires may be extended by splicing additional lengths of wire:
1. Motor wires are 22 AWG or larger
2. Battery wires are 16 AWG or larger
3. PWM wires are 20 AWG or 22 AWG

[CougarRobot]

I have been looking for the specification for the HiTechnic motor controller to be able to answer these kind of questions to my kids. Can you share the specs or guide me to someone more appropriate for me to request this documentation from?

Thanks!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Jamie,
I can understand your frustration as there is very little on the Tetrix site. I found the info here...
http://www.legoeducation.us/store/de...ID=1648&bhcp=1