Our team has been eyeing swerve drives for a while now, but the unavailability of Falcon motors for an extended period has nudged us toward considering Neo swerve setups. We’re facing a dilemma and would greatly appreciate insights into the differences between these options and how crucial these disparities might be.
With Falcons seemingly unavailable for the foreseeable future, we’ve started exploring the possibility of adopting a Neo swerve instead. Our primary quest is to understand the magnitude of differences between the two and their potential impact on our robot’s performance.
Specifically, we’re curious about:
Performance (Power and Speed): How do Neo motors in a swerve configuration compare in terms of power and speed against Falcons with the same gear ratios? How much the difference is noticeable and impactful, and are there ways to minimize these losses?
Monitoring and Control: In practical terms, how do these motors differ concerning monitoring and control when integrated into a swerve drive? Are there any intricacies or challenges unique to either motor in this aspect?
Programming Compatibility: Have teams encountered programming challenges or advantages specific to Neo-powered swerve drives compared to those employing Falcons? Are there compatibility issues that might impact the decision-making process?
Support: Based on your experiences, what level of support exists for each motor type when utilized in swerve drives? Are there disparities in resources, community assistance, or available documentation?
Future Proof: Additionally, we’re curious about the future-proofing aspect: How do Neo swerves stack up against Falcon swerves in terms of adaptability to future developments or technology advancements?
Any insights, comparisons, or real-world observations regarding performance or reliability would be immensely valuable and helpful.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Kraken’s are a viable alternative. Falcons are likely never coming back in stock. Also, I’d take a look at the NEO Vortex that’s on preorder as of today.
Unless you’re in the top 1% of teams and making an Einstein run, I doubt you’ll see enough of a performance difference to worry about. For 99% of the teams out there, any of the large brushless motors is going to give you the power and speed you need.
Teams have been plenty successful with both, so while there are differences they are fairly equivalent.
Compatibility really comes down to what else you’re using. If you go with MAXSwerve, for example, Neo’s are best. MK4’s were generally done with Falcons, but it’s not impossible to go the other way around either.
That generally comes down to the swerve module, not the motor, and what is supports. Pick your module and look at what software resources are available for it!
I don’t think anyone can really answer this. Aside from developing a comfort level with one vendors software API, I don’t think there’s much that prevents teams from deciding to switch as equipment wears out.
In short, focus first on your swerve module choice, and let that choice guide you to the best motor for that module.
We used Falcons (v2) in the 2023 season and we used NEOs in a cube bot for the off-season last month. Both worked just fine.
On paper, the Falcons are stronger/faster but we didn’t really notice much of a difference.
We had one Falcon fail during competition and had to replace it. No motor issue, but the controller stopped talking on CAN altogether.
We had no NEO failures, but it was just one competition.
We’ve found CTRE devices to be very chatty on the CAN bus. We will always use a CANivore for CTRE devices for this reason.
For next year, we’re looking at using Krakens for drive, Falcons (v2) for turn, and Cancoders, all on a separate CAN bus via CANivore and then we’ll use NEOs for mechanisms. We think it may be somewhat of a competitive advantage over running NEOs, but not sure how much actually.
Edit: we used SDS Mk4i modules for both robots above.
Performance Neos are slightly less powerful and slightly slower than Falcons, when both motors are fully functional. Practically speaking this has negligible impact at most levels of play. Many events were won using both systems this year. Advantage Falcon, sort of. Not much.
Monitoring and Control This is not my specialty area. My students prefer the CTRE “experience” to the REV “experience” in controls but I couldn’t articulate why, and I can say that they have not struggled to implement either into their control schemes. We currently have one Falcon-based swerve and one Neo-based swerve running and both run with no issues. They have even successfully used both systems on the same robot with minimal trouble. No advantage that I can discern.
Programming Compatibility See above. We have experienced no difficulty using either system, or both at once. No advantage.
Support I wouldn’t contact Vex support for anything. I contact REV support pretty regularly, and see their representatives interacting here and elsewhere. In the FIRST community their are plenty of examples of teams with code bases and shared resources for both. I don’t think either has an advantage there. Advantage REV.
Future Proof REV products over Falcons, there will be no more Falcons produced unless Vex sues to make it happen, and even then I don’t think it will happen. CTRE has partnered with WCP to make a Falcon alternative and while I don’t have any in hand I expect better things of that partnership than I do from Vex. REV not only has the mature Neos but also some new products that may give you better performance. All of this has been discussed here at length for some time.
My summative opinion is that, if you are limiting yourself to only the options available before this year, I would use Neos. If you are open to new products, both REV and WCP have viable options that are probably improvements over existing motors/controllers.
This is an international team so if there is a practical concern, neo 1.1 and spark maxes are honestly the only motor viable to get before kickoff. If the time doesn’t matter then I’d highly recommend WCP Krakens or REV vortexes.
We’ve been using Neos since the 2020 season. Of all the performance-related improvements that our team has discussed that we felt would have made a realistic tangible impact over the past four competition seasons that we’ve used them, not once has switching to Falcons come up. Is there a difference? Sure. Are the vast majority of teams at a level of consistent performance where they would ever notice that difference? No.
Both systems have their pro’s and con’s. As of this moment (this opinions is solely based upon programming knowledge of both) I would argue that CTRE’s environment is better ONLY because of their ability to estimate current positions of motors while taking into account the delay in communication alongside the faster speeds you can get with a CANivore (however REV might release something equivalent this year). Their Swerve Template takes full advantage of their suite and it seems like they built hardware features because they noticed deficiencies while programming their own swerve drive template. They have made their API significantly easier to use with the latest releases as well. CTRE’s template is moving towards a library format where you send in SwerveRequests and it will set the drivetrain accordingly. Giving you alot of control over it while keeping code low.
WITH THAT SAID.
REV hardware is easier to acquire and you are more likely to be able to replace any component that has inexplicably broke mid-tournament. REV hardware like SparkMAX’s CAN have a faster feedback loop by using the throughbore or other encoder which attaches directly to the SparkMAX expansion board. MOST things you can do with a CTRE environment you can do with a REV environment HOWEVER somethings are much more difficult to implement and user implementations would defeat the purpose of their existence (like the encoder latency compensation). REV also has a nice template but it doesn’t do as much or take into account as much as CTRE’s does.
To sum it up your best answer you can get is “it depends”