Hello, my team is using a DART actuator this year. We need one button to extend it and one to retract it. How would we go about doing so. What would we plug the actuators into?
The DART is a gearbox with an integrated potentiometer. Add a CIM, and wire and control it like any other CIM. If you want closed loop (feedback so you tell it where to go not just which direction), you can use a Talon SRX or Spark MAX to do it off-RIO, or with any controller, wire the potentiometer to an analog input. There’s also an optional encoder kit if you want to do an encoder rather than potentiometer.
We had issues in the past involving destroying the integrated potentiometer so we attached a string pot to the arm we were moving. So depending what you are doing, that may work better for you than an encoder.