My team currently has a 4 CIM drive train, run off of victor SPX motor controllers. We won the rookie all star award in our first regional, and are considering switching our drive to NEO with Spark Max controllers for the torque gain to be a more viable defense robot. DO you think that this would be worth the time spent, or would we be better off staying with what we have?
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NEOs are lighter, more powerful, and have built-in encoders. They’re great motors.
That said, if you aren’t running into specific problems with your current drivetrain, I wouldn’t put a bunch of effort into swapping out new motors. Don’t make design changes between events if you aren’t solving a specific problem. I would spend the time to practice driving and make sure that you have a working climber that is as reliable and stable as possible.
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Roll out a spot of field carpet next to a wall and weight it down. Place your robot on that carpet. Drive your robot into the wall at full power. If your wheels spin on the carpet, you’re what’s called “traction limited.” If your wheels don’t spin out, and your motors stall or your breakers trip, then you’re torque limited. Be careful to do this with some carpet you don’t care about putting burn marks in, in case your wheels do spin out.
If you’re traction limited, adding more torque won’t increase your pushing power. It may still improve your acceleration or allow you to become traction limited at a lower current, however.
Generally speaking though, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
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Neos were huge for our defense last year, as they allowed us to not only push just about any robot away from scoring zones but also to get in the way of teams and cut off large areas of the field. You will definitely see some improvement from going with Neos, but if it takes away from drive practice than it may not be worth it, as a killer DT means nothing if the people driving it have little to no practice. I would personally stick with CIMs and do more drive practice and other work, but if you feel like your DT is limiting your defensive potential than by all means go ahead.
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Our 6 neo drive/gearbox we designed and built this past summer proved invaluable at our 2020 Del Mar regional and worth the time required to migrate code. That said, we may purchase Falcons and migrate back to the CTRE environment next year.
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