How to put two motors on one spike

Technical Electrical
1

So my understanding is you can put two motors on one spike (Please tell me if I’m wrong), but I’m not sure how. I think just putting two wires in one crimp connection is the answer, but after reading about it online I saw a diagram to connect the power negative and the motor negative to the same, and just hook up the positives to the motor leads on the spike. Can someone help me figure this out?

2

Spikes are relays, they are for things that go on and off. Motor controllers drive motors and it’s one motor per controller. So if you have 6 motors you need six Talons (for example) The rules go over this pretty clearly.

3

R53 has the rules on this. Some motors can be on a spike and have two per controller. A senior mentor informed me that two Sims can be on the same controller if they are inputs to the same gearbox with one output. Is this true? The gear box output shaft is the single load?

4

The Spike can be used to control certain motors if you don’t need throttle, just on/off, although per table 4-4 in the rules, you can only legally control 1 motor with 1 spike, in which case you wire M+ to the motor’s positive and M- to the motor’s negative.

WITH THAT SAID
Outside of the competition, you can in fact control two motors separately with a Spike. Wire one to the M+ and another ground somewhere, and the other to M- and some other ground.

SEE: http://content.vexrobotics.com/docs/spike-blue-guide-sep05.pdf

EDIT: @cpapplefamily: A regular motor controller can support 2x of the motors that a Spike can support 1x of. You can never have 2x motors on a Spike. Additionally, a CIM is not one of the motors listed as being able to run 2x of on a proper motor controller. Furthermore, you would never want to, because that one motor controller is still limited to the same 40A breaker, which 2 CIMs could pop in a heartbeat.

What CAN be done, which I believe your mentor may have confused with what you wrote, is that you can have 2 motor controllers on one PWM signal, using a Y cable and 1 PWM port on the RoboRIO.

5

See rule R53 and table 4-4 for the details.

6

Thanks for clearing that up Y-cable the PWM to two Motor Controllers.
I see now that Spikes(Relay) depicts 1 motor, Motor Controllers allow 2 smaller.