Many months ago, probably around May-June, our team invested in 4 SDS mk4 swerve modules with Facon pinions and the needed 8 Falcon 500 motors. However, it has come to our team’s attention that a) We won’t be receiving these motors until late December and b) When we do receive them, they will very likely have some major QC issues. Our goal at the end of last season was to have swerve up and running on a practice bot before the season so our drivers could practice, but that doesn’t seem possible anymore. This is putting our team, specifically our head mentor, into a bit of a panic. We’re a small team without huge funds, so to sink this much money into something we might not even be able to have finished is a concerning thought.
Recently Andymark restocked their Neo motors and although it was sold out almost immediately, it just shows how rev might be beating vex in terms of production. I have also heard very little about any major QC issues with Neos. Also, our team already owns 2-3, so we’d have to buy less (not sure if we have the encoders thought).
However, Falcon motors still have a slight power advantage and are much easier to install. I’ve seen more code support and the built-in encoders make the wiring quicker, easier, and overall cleaner. Also, the current QC issues could very well just be in a few orders.
With all this in mind, and with your team’s experiences, what is the superior motor at this time? Is it worth canceling our order of Falcons and switching to Neo motors, modifying the pinions as needed? Should we look into purchasing falcons from another team? Any advice is appreciated.
We ran Neos last year on our MK4i and it worked out fine. No major issues. We will almost certainly do it again (if swerve makes sense for 2023).
With the lead times on falcons, it just makes a lot of sense to get some Neos and get up and running faster. Not to mention QC issues.
I don’t know a lot about the code side, but we didn’t seem to have much trouble getting up and running. I believe we are using the WPI resources for swerve currently.
We used the CANcoder in 2022 for our absolute encoder and it worked great in our system.
As long as you wire everything with care, i don’t think you will go wrong with using Neos on swerve.
Running CIMs on TalonSRXs is your simplest option.
Running Falcons with integrated TalonFXs is your easiest, most powerful option. (if they were in stock)
Running NEOs with SparkMaxs is your modern take on the CIM/Talon combo, but with more power. (i.e. motor and controller are separate, connecting wires required, more space…)
We bought a bunch of NEOs and SparkMaxs because they were available months ago. We’re willing to deal with the 45awg wire the motors seem to have for their encoders simply because we have them.
Side note: Not doing swerve because we don’t have the bandwidth to learn how to install and program them during this off season (would have ordered modules back in June if I thought we did).
In practical applications, the supposed additional power of the Falcon isn’t likely to amount to much. You are limited by how much current the battery can supply (you’ll almost certainly be current limiting to avoid brownout) and your ability to maintain contact with the carpet. There are lots of threads you can go read on this and make your own decision.
Neos have built in encoders too. And you’re still going to need encoders on your swerve modules, anyway.
Easier to install? The built in controllers are convenient, but the SparkMax to Neo connection is pretty easy. Yes, the encoder wires can be somewhat fragile, but if you ziptie them to the power wires where they go into the controller for strain relief, and take a little care with routing and tying them down, you’ll be just fine. And if you damage one you plug in a new ~$45 motor instead of tossing a $180 unit that offers no repairability.
Extending a Neo to be far away from its controller (like on an intake) is the least great option, since extending the encoder wires is possible but involves a fairly fragile extension cable/joiner. Plan on having your controllers near your motors whenever possible. Or use a different motor type for those kinds of mechanisms. Not everything has to be brushless! (Running your CAN bus out an intake to a Falcon is a scary prospect too, honestly.)
FWIW, we’ve used Neos since 2020. We own quite a few. We’ve had exactly ONE big Neo fail on us, and that was our fault (wires on a practice bot got damaged due to something coming loose in hard driving and cutting into them). We just bought more, put them on our offseason swerve, and plan to use them on the next competition bot. With $40 savings per motor/controller and the lack of systemic QA issues on Neos, I think there is a compelling argument for going that route. But ultimately, like everything else, your team has to make the call.
I’ll echo this. We started down the Neo path before the Falcons were ever released and have since built a pretty solid stockpile of them and SparkMax’s, so it only makes sense to continue using them. Dependability is another big factor. The Neo’s just work.
For us, Falcons would represent additional risk and cost at this point. QC / reliability concerns would result in us having to spend already-short time and resources to crack them open to QC them ourselves. It would represent yet another learning curve to overcome - both electrically and programming-wise. And it simply wouldn’t make sense for us to take teams funds away from other pressing needs in order to purchase a COTS parts that we frankly already have. As pointed out above, there just isn’t a sizeable enough performance gain to justify it.
Our team ran SDS MK4 modules with NEOs at the beginning of this season, but we had to switch to Falcon’s halfway through due to severe issues. We ended up losing a competition due to the shafts free-spinning in the pinions. The pinions we received for the 8mm shaft from SDS ended up being slightly wider than press-fit, so after 2 competitions of use, they gave out. In terms of the motor hardware themselves, we’ve found NEOs to be more reliable than Falcons but in terms of hardware support, we found Falcons to be superior. I think this may be because for the last few years, Falcons have been the de facto “default” choice for things like swerve modules, teams and suppliers have been able to more easily identify when things go wrong with them.
In terms of software, it’s been more of the same story - NEOs work as expected, but the one thing we missed was the PIDs with a remote sensor that we could implement on Falcons. This constrained us to using the SDS library for our swerve control.
Electronics wise, we love the NEOs due to their simplicity, but due to the reasons mentioned above, we’re on the fence between NEOs and Falcons for this season.
Cims won’t work on the new sds modules. They are too big around. Quoted from SDS website “CIM motors are not compatible with the MK4 due to their larger diameter” and I know it says the same thing for the mk4i
I know SDS uses keyed pinion gears now, at least on the mk4i. So there’s no press fit chance of spinning. The only thing is those tiny keyways can be a bit of a pain to put in sometimes.
Ok thats kinda why I mentioned being sure on the mk4i modules and just figured the mk4 would be the same. Thats what happens when you ASSume something. We have mk4i modules.
My team found ourselves in a similar position after the 2022 season. We knew swerve was the future, and wanted to get on that train as early as possible in the offseason to ensure we had plenty of experience under our belts come 2023.
We opted to go with NEOs because we had experience with them, had them in stock, and we where reasonably confident they would continue to be in stock. On paper Falcons seemed great, but in reality the QC issues coupled with them not being in stock till at least November (oh hey, it’s now November with no updates!) meant that switching to Falcons was a nonstarter for us.
We couldn’t be happier with this decision. We spent all summer and fall developing and getting driving practice with SDS MK4 modules using NEOs, and got invaluable experience running swerve at an offseason competition 2 weeks ago. We are using a version of 364 Falcon Base Swerve codebase adapted for NEOs; the performance is great!
Ultimately, it’s unfortunate that issues with Falcons are causing teams to have make these sort of tough decisions and plan months in advance, but that’s where we are at right now.
What’s that age old saying, “A motor in the hand is worth 2 in the bush?”
In my experience, falcons are more slightly more capable, but NEO’s are good too and i feel better about supporting rev as a company. To be honest, just get whatever you can actually purchase rn.
Same. We didn’t have the greatest wire management last year, (and I did the wiring, it was fine) but this year I’m hoping to get some really nice wire pathing and the split loom cable stuff. We have a bucket full of that stuff, but haven’t used it recently
Biggest thing for me is the built in controller on the falcon. We still use a mix of other motors that use talons (and occasionally a Neo550 with a sparkmax), but being able to save some room on 4+ motor controllers plus the wires they need helps a ton when it comes to planning out the layout of electronics.