I have heard mixed things about which of the two motor lines is better. I’m curious about your guys’ experience with them, including their performance, reliability, and user-friendliness (wiring programming). Is the Neo line of brushless motors (550, vortex, basic neo brushless motor), or is it the Krakens (X60, X44) for the superior FRC motor?
krakens are better cause they have an integrated motor controller and yoy don’t have to deal with an external one
- what I heard from my electrical person
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And your electrical person now gets a NEO Vortex chucked at them, with its integrated (but swappable) controller.
Gotta be a little more specific about what particular NEO you’re looking at, and what you want it to be better at. Answers will vary depending on what you’re considering.
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They’re not very different. The Kraken is a more powerful motor, but only by a little bit. The NEO can be used with a wider variety of motor controllers.
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we have like 8 neo vortexs with spark whatevers sitting in storage for no reason. I don’t know why.
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I mean if you don’t need them…
I know a team that would really want them.
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I mean… I’m pretty sure we’re looking into selling them. and we also have old falcons and stuff that we’re never gonna use again…
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The AMB calculator has a neat motor curve generator that allows the motors to be compared in a few ways: Motor Curve Display - AMB Robotics Calculator
And if you click on the “DOCS” link in the upper right corner of the page, you’ll find information including underlying formulas.
We have used Neos, but not Krakens (though we’re going to try them this coming year). Neos have mostly been really good, but on paper at least the Krakens appear stronger… able to sustain fast speeds with more load. The motor curves make it look like Kraken x60s blow the Neos away, but the stratospheric high end torque apparently supportable by the Krakens requires a lot of current… probably more than breakers and current limits would allow for more than a very short time. History has proven either motor is up to most tasks. Still, if two identical robots were in a pushing match, and one had Neos while the other had X60s, and both robots held traction, I assume the Kraken one would win.
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we used neo vorteces, krakens, and falcons on our robot this year and neos, neo vorteces, and falcons on our robot last year. here’s my take: whatever you have is what you should use. if you have the funds, upgrading neos to vortexes is the most affordable option, but the performance gains by using krakens are often overstated imo.
if you’re buying all new motors, krakens have great programming with ctre, but vortexes are more affordable and repairable and work great for most applications.
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From a reliability perspective I have seen a few NEO 550’s and Spark MAX controllers fail on us. So far I haven’t seen a Falcon or Kraken fail on our team. Our Krakens have been through the ringer though with coral getting direct hits and having them stall constantly on our elevator this year.
From a programming perspective the TalonFX has way more documentation and support out there while with REV I had some trouble finding proper documentation. Using CTRE’s motion magic to tune our PID’s a little more aggressive is nice too. Overall its just easier to teach someone on how to look up documentation with CTRE products and with everything being configurable while just being connected to the robot and not having to use a usb type-C cable is a nice addition also.
From a performance perspective, I dont think your going to rise to a top 10 team from just switching to krakens. I honestly don’t mind using both.
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For Rev it’s definitely the motor controller that makes it usually not the motor as SPM broke multiple times when I was trying to set up everything (kept on needing to put it into recovery mode) and my main gripe with the motors and SPM is the stupid encoder cable and the CAN cable the encoder you can’t do much about but the CAN cable you can replace with the TTB one or just use Thrifty Novas honestly like everyone said use what you have and can buy the difference is mostly negligible to other more important improvements with you team.
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One note I will put in here for 550s is that from our experience you HAVE to support BOTH ends of the shaft, put a 30 amp breaker on it, and current limit it to ensure that it has the best chance of surviving. This year was the first year ALL of our 550s survived the entire season because we followed these guide lines.
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Last year, our team used Neo 550 and Neo Vortex motors. The Neo 550s never failed us, but we had some problems with the Vortex motors.
Firstly, we used them on our MK4i swerve modules, and they broke frequently (I think we broke four Vortex motors in total). Furthermore, they were not very reliable—some burned out during prototyping because we applied too much torque, and sometimes their sparks stopped working. In total, we bought 12 Vortex motors before the 2024 season, and by the end of the season, only three motors and sparks were still functional.
This year, we bought 13 Kraken motors and used them on our robot. They were highly reliable and performed very well. All the motors are still working, and the entire configuration process with Phoenix Tuner X was much smoother. Additionally, the Kraken’s specs are significantly better than the Vortex’s (and, of course, the Neo’s), offering almost the same maximum speed but three times the torque.
Therefore, I would recommend the Krakens over the Neo and Neo Vortex.
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Krakens are superior because CTRE’s code is just better. I love Rev’s physical products but their software is just frustrating to work with.
Anecdotally, I have heard multiple teams talk about their Neo Vortex’s breaking, never hear that about Krakens.
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Anecdotally, I have heard multiple teams talk about their Neo Vortex’s breaking, never hear that about Krakens.
Starting in December 2024, the Neo Vortex manufacturing was changed from the front piece being cast to being CNC’d. Prior to that, there were some teams using the Vortex with SDS mk4i modules that were cracking the front plate of the motor. (My team ran this same setup, but never had this problem.)
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I will repeat here what I have stated to various students on the team, there is not enough fundamental difference in performance between them to really make much of a difference on the field. Both product lines perform admirably. There is certainly not enough difference to merit switching from one to the other if you are already working within a particular ecosystem.
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From an electrical perspective, we have really liked the flexibility of being able to attach and remove wires from a Kraken, which lets us run wires directly from motor to PDH without additional connections in between. Fewer connection points means fewer potential points of failure caused by bad crimps, loose connections, etc etc.
Kids also don’t have to worry about making a mistake while cutting a wire from a motor/controller too short or redoing a connection if we change our minds about using ferrules, Anderson powerpoles, or just keeping the bare stripped wire to use with Wago inline connectors. It provides a lot of flexibility for our team.
If a motor or other mechanism is damaged, being able to remove wires at the motor itself also helps a ton with hot swaps.
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Somewhat true but i think it is good to note that stator current of the motor is only 1:1 with supply current (minus some minor switching loses) when commanded at full voltage output (100% Duty Cycle). Using trapezoidal, If you apply a supply current limit at say 60A the stator can still pull ~148A (~40% duty cycle) at 0rpm and that will slowly drop as rpms ramp up.
In our experience the Kraken was way more effective than NEOs on mechanism acceleration and efficiency.
[Analogy warning!]
A friend* who I surf with frequently is always looking at getting new surfboards. He does a good turn (well, in his view it’s good) on a wave and starts thinking about buying a more aggressive, lighter board, or switching out the fins for a new set designed by some pro. If he just had ____, he’d have been able to surf better.
He’s approaching his board selection based on whether the equipment he currently uses is somehow holding him back. I see him surf and I think he has so much more room for improvement, based on skills, that he doesn’t need a new board with more capability. But, that’s just a different way of looking at the situation.
I look at the surfboard as a tool that helps me have fun. If my idea of fun changes, and the board can’t keep up, I’ll look at upgrades.
We could argue forever over which model of board is “the best” based on computational fluid dynamics (TBH, he wouldn’t geek out on his like I would), which pros use them, or any number of other factors. But in the end, the minor advantages one board has over another won’t make a difference for most surfers. As long as it does what I need it to do, I’m happy.
*yes, this is a real friend, not some sort of projection of my own inadequacies.
So… motors. Yeah, a Kraken X60 is, on paper, much better than a NEO/Vortex. Its benefits are numerous, and its abilities at the extremes of use are such that a NEO Vortex can’t keep up. But if not operating at those extremes, go with what you can afford, and what is readily available.
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To me, the CTRE based controller is the separator. We’ve just found it much easier to get the performance we were trying to achieve with the TalonFx/TalonFXS rather than the sparkMax
as others have said - the motors on paper are very similar - ReCalc
Now you can go TalonFXS + Neo though.
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