Our team had always used COAST setting on the Victor 884s for the drivetrain until last year we used mecanum wheel drive and BRAKE was more efficient for strafing.
Now, a few things about our past and present bots:
-Rookie year was all kit wheels (2 powered)
-Second year mecanum (no autonomous)
-We have never used a fully functional autonomous except on rookie year (Aim High) we figured we might as well make the robot do something and the programmer made it go forward at about 1/2 - 3/4 speed while the starting position was diagonal so it would crash against the barrier, align itself with one the lower goals and just shoot balls.
-This year the drivetrain is 2 powered 2008 KoP wheels (2 motors each) + 2 nonpowered omni wheels. Few of us thought that since this year’s game is mostly driving around the field besides handling the trackball that for normal gameplay COAST function was preferrable but during autonomous/hybrid period BRAKE function would be preferrable to prevent the robot coasting slightly between commands, so more precision.
-We are using 30 amp breakers on each drive motor (every year) and have never had ANY problems with them tripping so I don’t think increased current variations with BRAKE function will be problem either.
Is there a method to switch between COAST and BRAKE electronically from the operator interface ie a button on the joystick or a flipswitch?
Recomendations, how-to’s ideas would be very useful. Thanks.
PS: Sorry about excessive explanation, I don’t tend to post too much so when I actually do I try to explain everything I can think of at the moment.
EDIT:Not sure if this has been answered before.