This is a non-competition related question (and thus lower priority).
I’m working on a personal project that uses 3 NEO 550 motors with Spark Maxes, a non-FRC absolute encoder (AS5600 chip most likely), and a servo (likely with position feedback). I’m trying to figure out if I can properly control all of this components with something like a raspberry pi 3b+, or if I’ll need to get something else like a CTRE Hero board. I don’t plan on using CAN, since it seems like dev boards with CAN are more expensive than just using PWM. I’m trying to keep things cheap as possible and use what I have if I can (RPi 3b+, 2 arduinos).
To be clear, you just want to control the Spark Maxes with PWM, not communicate with them over CAN? If so, then yes, you can do that perfectly well with an Arduino. Not sure about the Pi; OSs don’t tend to be good at doing timed pulses on GPIO. If not, there’ll certainly be a PWM shield for a Pi.
Yes, that’s correct. I looked at CAN-capable boards which were about $60 minimum (except for a CAN-shield for arduino, which was ~$30).
Thank you for your insight!
It appears both Teensy and ESP32 have onboard CAN controllers (including CAN-FD for the former) and only require very cheap CAN transceiver units to actually hook up to a network, though that doesn’t fit your specification of “use what I have”. Teensy 4.0 with CAN-FD is currently listed at $19.95 and ESP-32 development (Arduino-like) boards can be had for under $10. Alternatively, there are are full CAN conversion modules (e.g. MCP2515 for SPI) that can be had for a few bucks and could be used with an existing microcontroller. From experience, it can be nice to have a microcontroller dev board that is a bit more powerful and featureful than an ATMEGA328P Arduino.