Designing the Ultimate Motor Test Rig... Hopefully

[sbrumbaugh]

While the kids are plugging away working on robot, I’ve made it my side mission to upgrade our motor testing box. I’m looking to be able to use the box to quickly test both brushed and brushless motors. My plan is to use a spark Max as the motor controller for each channel. What I would like to be able to do is somehow change between brushed and brushless with a Toggle switch. I know you can hold the mode button for three seconds and it’ll change, but I would like to bury the controllers inside the Housing. I’d also like to make it a little more… new team member friendly.
I’m going to control everything with an Arduino, Uno, I guess, first and foremost my question is, is it possible to somehow change with a toggle switch and secondly, if anyone’s done it, can you point me in the right direction on how.
The research I’ve done so far seems to indicate that, at least previously, you could control the mode of the spark max through can, but it looks like that’s all being depreciated. It Should be noted. I am definitely not the coding mentor

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[mkauffman]

Spark maxes can also be configured and controlled over usb, but that might be a bit much to code/embed into an arduino.

It is also possible to downgrade the firmware on the spark maxes. AFAIK most (if not all) firmware versions will allow for controlling both brushed and brushless motors—motor controllers don’t really need software updates, especially if just used for testing.

At this point, it might be easier just to create a separate box with a cheap dedicated brushed motor driver (either an old FRC one or one taken from a drill.

I was thinking about making something similar for my team. Could you share more details about this box so that we could make something like it?