CTRE has a couple of neat new products this fall. I’m not sure if they announced it anywhere (or were going to), but since I’m easily excitable, I’m posting them here:
The CANifier is a CAN-to-IO converter with a powerful 10-amp RGB LED strip driver. Features include PWM inputs and outputs, Quadrature decoding, GPIO, and a field-upgradeable firmware system.
The Talon Tach is a pass through contactless limit switch and tachometer that integrates seamlessly with the Talon SRX motor speed controller, and CTRE has some 3D printed mounting brackets on their site:
The CANifier looks like a neat thing for teams who run out of DIOs and relay ports or are too timid to use relay modules for LEDs.
The Talon Tach might be a game changer for low-mid resource teams. When used in conjunction with a white AM sure-grip wheel and a black sharpie, this could allow direct speed measurement of a drive wheel or manipulator. If this works, it would be less expensive than a traditional encoder, though only good up to about 300-400 pulses per second.
Note that 20,000 edges per minute is only 333 edges per second, which is a significantly coarser resolution than most teams use for their flywheel shooters. Still, better by far than no encoder!
Thanks Nick! These were things that I worked on over the summer at CTRE. After interning there I can attest to the fact that their products are all exhaustively tested before shipping.
I was planning on using the Talon Tach mainly as a limit switch. I’ve never had good luck using the little microswitch ones.
I’ll click pretty much anything with CTRE in the title. And whenever I do its usually something pretty interesting but this is really interesting. These are some seriously cool little doohickeys and I’m excited to see what teams will be able to do with these. Really nice work, Anand!
I said it on Omar’s Facebook page, but the CANifier totally looks like the missing link for converting old robots to a HERO board to keep them running. (You could do this with Talon SRXs already, but I can’t blame a team for wanting to sub in cheaper/older motor controllers on a robot that only does demos.)