FRC Team 8029 here with an electrical/software question. We are trying to hook up an external encoder to our spark max without using the encoder from the neo. We were wondering if anyone had any success with this issue. This is for our swerve drive.
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Please help.
Begging definitely won’t get help any faster. Please try to refrain from doing so here. Bumping a thread after a reasonable amount of time with no response is different.
What you’re looking for is called Alternate Encoder mode. The SparkMax will internally use the normal encoder pins for the Hall Effect encoder that’s necessary to make a brushless motor work, so you need to use alternate pins and configure the controller to use that instead.
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You need to connect the NEO motor’s encoder, period. The motor will burn out if you don’t.
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For use in a swerve drive, they probably actually want to use an absolute encoder. If the encoder is a REV Through Bore encoder, they can connect it in absolute mode using the Absolute Encoder Adapter board (different from the Alternate Encoder Adapter board).
For other absolute encoders, they can manually connect the encoder’s duty cycle / PWM output to pin 6 on the data port, with the Data Port Breakout board.
Software-wise, I’d recommend looking at our MAXSwerve templates to see how the absolute encoder can be used in a swerve context.
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Very good point. I missed that it was for swerve.
Noah - for the slow only electrical folks - me.
If we want to use use the REV Through Bore encoder as an absolute encoder with lets say a NEO550 and SparkMax - we can use the REV Absolute Encoder Adapter Board?
Not much documentation on the Absolute Encoder Adapter board (REV-11-3326?) - the photos I saw didn’t look like the adapter board pinout matched the Spark data port.
I’m missing something obvious - who can help?
If we want to use use the REV Through Bore encoder as an absolute encoder with lets say a NEO550 and SparkMax - we can use the REV Absolute Encoder Adapter Board?
That’s correct, and I am referring to REV-11-3326.
The photos I saw didn’t look like the adapter board pinout matched the Spark data port.
I’m not an electrical engineer, but the traces between the data port and the encoder input are very non-obvious to me, so I’m not sure how you’d be able to tell from a photo. That being said, the board just connects the second (white) wire on the encoder port to pin 6 on the data port, as well as power, ground, and the limit switch pads.
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