Hey, im part of team 2212 and we are trying to build a swerve drive and are not quite sure how we can connect the cancoders to our electrical system. Can it be connected to the low voltege ports on the pdp/pdh and if so which fuse we need to use?
Or we can only connect it to the vrm on 12v500ma?
CANcoders take anywhere from 6-16V and draw roughly 50mA of current. It doesn’t require regulated input from the VRM so either option would work with any size fuse pretty much.
To save on the number of power ports used, our team used these five way WAGOs (Amazon.com), or another option could be the rev mini power module
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Most teams I’ve seen connect them to either the REV mini power module, which is powered from one of the Low-current ports on the PDP/PDH, or to the VRM.
My team usually solders all four of the wires to a single lead and connects that to the VRM at 12V/500mA (this works since each CANcoder only pulls ~60mA). Either works just fine, however.
Edit: after reading the post above, we have used the 5-WAGOs too successfully. Soldering them just reduces failure points and takes up less space.
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Cancoders can be powered directly from either the PDP or PDH, which is probably the simplest/easiest way to power them. As @zrotert already pointed out, each cancoder only draws about 50 mA, which means its usually best to combine the power and ground wires for all of the cancoders, and just plug all of them into 1 slot. This will save you slots on your PDP/PDH, and its totally fine since the cancoders don’t draw enough current to need their own slot. Also make sure to use a pretty small breaker, 5-10 amps is more than enough. To combine the wires, you can use a 5 way Wago connector, but soldering the 4 wires together (which is what my team does) will be simpler and remove failure points.
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