My name is Kyle Wilson and I am on a highschool FTC team in San Antonio, Texas. We are a first year team and I noticed the limitation on the amount of motor controllers. We would really like to add another motor but I am currently at that max for motor controllers, we are using tank drive to move and I was wondering if it’s legal, and/or possible to put both left side motors and both right side motors in one motor controller. I have very limited knowledge of how the electronic components work and would appreciate any advice on the subject. Thanks in advance.
Team 4868.
It is common practice for FTC teams to control two motors per channel on the motor controller [four motors per controller in total]. Be very careful to check the wire connections into the motor controller, it is a tight fit to connect two wires in the terminal block.
It is legal to double up to four motors per controller. I can’t confirm this but I heard doing so 1)won’t have a effect on battery life but 2)splits the voltage for each motor so that each motor runs twice as fast.
I do know that two motors connected to one channel will be recognized as just one motor in RobotC.
Kyle,
The answer is yes. From the Tetrix website…
The HiTechnic DC Motor Controller for TETRIX® connects to an NXT Intelligent Brick sensor port and will enable you to control powerful DC gear motors for use with TETRIX robots. The controller has two H-bridge outputs to control the speed and direction of two DC gear motors and is designed to connect to the TETRIX hole pattern. A four-motor robot can also be built by paralleling two motors to one channel.
I hope this helps.
