Playing With Fusion 2025 Product Launch: Power Distribution, Lasers, CAN, and more

[JaredL]

Happy Holidays, everyone!

It’s that time of year again. While we wait to see what this year’s game has in store, we wanted to show off some of our new products for the 2025 season, as well as share a little refresher for some of our more popular products. We’ve started our production ramp-up so we’re ready for anything! Take a look at our full robotics product lineup anytime

First off are the new XT30 based power distribution modules. These modules are designed to simplify your robot’s wiring, while providing robust connectors that are quick and easy to connect/disconnect. The small footprint fits anywhere it is needed. With 6 output channels, the rats’ nest of wires will disappear. If more channels are needed, multiple boards can be daisy-chained together. Available in long and wide configurations.

To complement the high current modules, we’re also excited to introduce the PTC Fused Sensor Distribution Module. The PWR-20001 includes Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) fuses, a resettable fuse ideal for protecting against overcurrent faults. The small form factor makes it mountable virtually anywhere on your build. Wiring to robot extremities becomes simplified, reducing failure points. Clear labeling shows the polarity of the connectors, and LED indicators display the status of each channel for quick troubleshooting

Laser-based proximity measurement continues to prove itself year-over-year, and PwFusion has both CAN- and I2C-based solutions for the robotics market! All of our solutions are supplied in a case with the required coverglass to protect the delicate sensor and keep you in the match.

The 4m Laser ToF CAN sensor is the most flexible sensor we offer, powered by a flexible 5-16V supply and interfacing with the robot’s CAN bus. Lots of configuration is available through the CAN interface for range, region-of-interest (field-of-view) and update rate settings (up to 100Hz ranging). If you’d rather roll with I2C, we have both the VL53L1 and the VL53L3 housed in the same protective housing and level-shifted to accept 3.3V - 5V power and I2C interfacing.

To tie everything together, we also offer CAN networking solutions for FRC, including components to support Daisy-Chain and Star network configurations. New to CAN Networking? The link above includes links to training videos on YouTube that we’ve put together to help take the mystery out of CAN architecture and wiring.

For 2025 we’ve added four new interconnect options in “Y” and inline configurations. Insulation Displacement Connectors (IDC) make splicing wires easier than ever by eliminating the necessity for stripping insulation. Just make a cut and insert the wire into the connector! No crimping tools are required.

Finally, we are continuing to support our two telescoping arm variants. While we don’t know what this year’s game looks like, rest assured, if we can help bring precision robot integration to the masses with a similar product this year, we’re going to do it!

Thanks, and have a great day!
-Jared
Owner, Playing With Fusion, Inc

[Amicus1]

Do you have a timeline for the release of the PWF software library?

And when it is released, would you please contribute the vendor JSON to GitHub - wpilibsuite/vendor-json-repo: WPILib Vendor JSON Repository do it can show up in VS Code?

[JaredL]

We’re planning on wrapping up testing with the initial 2025 WPILib release this weekend, so I would expect to have our library available next week. And yes, we’ll be sure to include our vendor JSON.

[Bpk9p4]

The new CAN connectors look really good! We’ve been using Power-poles for CAN the last couple of years, and they’ve been a real headache. These seem much easier and more fail-proof than Power-poles. I’m excited to give these a try!

[JaredL]

Version 2025.01.04 of the PlayingWithFusion library is released and available for teams to use.

• The API is the same as last year but the C++ namespace of the CANVenom, CTimeOfFlight, & CTMD37003 classes changed from ‘frc’ to ‘pwf’
• We included version 1.60 of the Venom motor firmware. This new firmware improves motor control when using PWM rather than CAN
• C++ Documentation lives here: libPlayingWithFusion: Class List
• Java documentation lives here: com.playingwithfusion (libPlayingWithFusion API)

The library may be installed directly from the vendor library installation tab in VSCode or through our JSON file directly from here: FRC Software library Installation

We expect to have a LabView VIP available later this week.

[Weldingrod1]

I’ve got some Venom motors… whats the wiring for PWM control? I’m not getting any motion. I get green flash-flash-long with or without the can wires connected to my servo tester.

[JaredL]

To be honest, I can never remember which CAN wire to use, so I always tell folks to short both the yellow and green wire together and drive both with the PWM signal.

There were some issues with the older Venom firmware with PWM mode. Make sure you update your firmware to version 1.6. There’s nothing new for the CAN folks, but PWM folks should all run version 1.6

To reflash Venom (or our TOF sensors for that matter). Connect the green and yellow CAN wires to the roboRio along with two terminating resistors. You can do one motor at a time, or all in parallel. Create a new robot project, add the Playing with fusion library through VSCode and instantiate an instance of the CANVenom class. You don’t have to do anything with it, you just have to have an instance of that class so the build tools know to include our library. Deploy your robot project then open a web browser to your robots IP address, port 5812. For my Rio that’s http://172.22.11.2:5812. That will get you to the Playing with Fusion device portal. From there you should see each of your motors and see a button to update their software to 1.6. If the webpage says the newest available software is 1.45 your motors are old enough to be incompatible with the new firmware. PM me and we’ll figure out how to get you going with PWM control.