Meaning of white cable on NEO brushless motor

On a NEO brushless motor (rev-21-1650): What is the white cable meaning?

Looking on rev site there isn’t a specific mention of the white cable that I could find. Any references welcome :grinning:

Neos are brushless motors, which need 3 wires instead of the 2 that a brushed motor would need.

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Brushed motors have two power wires, a power and ground (red and black), and the brushes on the inside of the motor are contacts that cause alternating magnetic fields, which pulls the shaft around in a circle. Brushless motors don’t have the brushes, so the alternating magnetic fields are provided by three power channels, that turn on and off in sequence to propel the motor rotor and shaft to spin. The white, red, and black wires are all power wires, and need to be connected to the matching colors on the Spark MAX. You cannot connect them backwards to invert the motor.

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Because of this, they are sometimes called ‘phase wires’ because they connect to the motor phases.

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Actually, swapping a pair of phase wires will make it go backwards, because it flips the commutation order. Don’t do that though because it’s confusing.

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Does that apply to sensored commutation as well? I assumed that was the limiting part.

Yes. It worked on some AC induction motors I got to play with in college at least, which did have an encoder offset.

Also don’t do that because these are sensored motors and then the phases won’t match the encoder.

Like was said above, the white cable is the same as the red and black, it is just one of the three phases. (red to black, black to white, white to red)

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If you swap the sensor leads as well, it should work. That’s not an option for FRC motors though.

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Thanks for that clarification :grinning: this helps

Thanks :grinning:

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