I swear I saw someone posting about using a short JST PH extension cable to protect the SparkMax connector… Does anyone have a link for that? Anything that doesn’t require the junction boards?
This would sorta be that.
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Yeah, I found LOTs of pairs like that, but I was hoping for a finished assembly, not a do-it-yourself kit 
There’s this thing that allows you to assemble what I want. I guess 15 sets for $18 isn’t too bad. The wire is good! Hmm. Fresh-botter task?
Hmm. I didn’t realize you could buy the female end. That’s kind of cool.
Hope there is a different solution that I’ve not seen yet.
We hit the wires where they go into the connector with hot glue to keep them from being pulled out
We just zip-tie the encoder wire to the power wires, an inch or so away. Acts as strain relief, prevents unplugging, and easy to undo.
In our experience, the SparkMax connector isn’t what gets damaged; the encoder wires break where they enter the JST connector.
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Has anyone considered cutting the motor’s encoder wire and soldering in a “better” connector in between? We’re just starting with NEOs after the problems with Falcons and the weak encoder wire is our only gripe so far. Adding a connector to the motor wire should be exception B to the no modifying rule.
That’s our tentative plan this season. It’s not as much a connector problem as a wire gauge problem. The Neo 550 is worse than the Neo.
Our tentative plan is to make a JST PH to molexSL converters (out of of the Rev extension wires that use larger gauge wire). Then crimp all of our Neos with molexSL connectors, which we have found to be more reliable with the tiny wire. We also have a $400 crimper for them, so there is that. We designed a Spark Max mount to hold all the JST PH connections with the ziptie.
We also plan to use Neos over Neo 550s in most applications this season.
It’s overkill, but we have enough issues with it in 2022, we aren’t taking chances. We lost our climber for like 3 matches at state, because of a broken connector on a neo 550. Also lost a shooter motor. We are hopeful doing all this will make our robot more bulletproof.
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Have you run with the braiding through a season yet? If so, how did it work out and are you planning to keep doing this?
Braiding the lead wires? Yeah, we have done that for a couple seasons. (I think back to 2019). Seems to work fine…but didn’t think it was particularly innovative.
I’ve had electrical engineers say “it’s better”. Something about loops and EMI. I can’t imagine it really does much though.
Mainly it just keeps the wires more organized. We will probably do it again, but I don’t think it really matters much.
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Argh. Apparently ALL 6 pin jst ph cables are pin 1 to pin 6. Rev’s joiner board flips things to fix it.
Looks like I get to desolder the jst connectors on one side to fix it on MY board. Ugh.
I’m curious what you plan to do at the controller’s JST PH connector. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re relying on the heavier extension-wire gauge as being less likely to break there… but how does the mount fit in with this? (Can you share a picture?)
In terms of reliability, the tradeoff I see is the 12 new crimps and another (albeit latching) connector added for every motor, all of which are potential failure points. But maybe the sturdier JST outweighs that.
Do you have the model #? I assume it’s likely the one they were demoing at Worlds last year, which I forgot to get details of. While I don’t think it’s in the cards this year I’d like to put it on the hypothetically-someday-wish-list, as we use the Molex SL’s for CAN.
Yep. This is pretty great. Technically our crimper belongs to one of our electrical mentors (who is generous enough to let us use it) , but if he left we would put a VERY high priority on buying another. All of our CAN wires are crimped this way, and we try to only use these or Anderson PP on the robot.
https://www.molex.com/molex/products/part-detail/application_toolin/0638118700
Sure!! Its actually all in a different post if you want to read a lot about it. It just has a ziptie to hold the JST wires for strain relief. Nothing super fancy. We may also use hot glue to hold it in, but haven’t decided. Because it will have the MolexSL on the other side, there isn’t really a reason to ever remove that JST connector.
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Yeah, “avoid ever removing the connector” from the SparkMax is exactly what I want to do
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