Best Encoder for a TB Mini

FIRST General Forum
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Hey everyone. My team would like to use a toughbox mini on each side of the drive train with 2 NEO motors on each side. Anyways,

What is the best encoder I can use to easily interface with this drive gearbox? Something easy, accessible, and accurate. I heard that this year the shaft on the TB Mini isnt magnetic, and so apparently you’re not able to use magnetic encoders such as the SRX Mag? The E4T is from AndyMark, so that means I’ll have to wait 2 weeks, which is a NONO.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you so much!

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The shafts on ours have magnets. And even if they didn’t, you could order the shaft alone with magnets if needed.

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We use the CUI AMT103-V and like it. We mount it to the TB Mini housing with the double sided tape included in the KOP. If you go this route, get the cable too.

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Same here, we got a couple of AMTs in FIRST Choice but you can order them with your DigiKey voucher if you didn’t. We switched from E4Ts in the past and I think they are a little easier to correctly install and handle misalignment.

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Have you considered using the encoders in the motors? You’ll see some loss in accuracy due to backlash but that probably won’t be an issue unless you’re doing some pretty complex autonomous driving with multiple direction changes.

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Same team as OP. Thanks for letting us know the integrated encoders existed! The website lists them as “3-phase hall sensors,” which is not very clear about what they actually do.

Looking at all the pictures of the motor on its product listing, I don’t see any separate wires for encoder data… is it included with just plugging the motor in? That would be exciting.

Again, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We aren’t planning on having a full auto, so the backlash shouldn’t be a problem for us. We’ll definitely try it out as soon as we can.

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My team hasn’t used the motors at all yet, so I may be wrong, but I believe one of the four wires that comes out of the NEO is for the data from the encoder and thermal sensors inside the motors. This information should be available through the motor controller. I’m sure the documentation is more clear on this.

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The Motor has 4 wires RED,BLACK,WHITE and a sleeved cable for the encoder

1 Like
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Thanks, I’ve corrected my post.

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We really like the 63R256 Grayhills so we designed a part that allows you to mount them to the TB mini KOP gearboxes. Mount the encoder to the attached 3D printed part, use a small piece of surgical tubing and zipties to couple the 1/4" gearbox output shaft to the encoder shaft, and finally run a long ziptie around the motors and the part to secure it. We ran this all last season.
Good luck!Encoder Mount 3.0.stl (20.2 KB)

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It was pointed out that our exported STL was scaled incorrectly, thanks for catching that. This one should be correct.Encoder Mount 3.0 - corrected.stl (24.3 KB)
Nate

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