Hey, 1051! My team switched to swerve for 2023 after historically sticking mostly to the AM14U since about 2015 or mecanum before that.
We ordered MK4’s last fall, and our main programmer had about 2 months to figure it out before kickoff. No code mentor, we just had a senior trying to work it out. He was relatively new to FRC too, and didn’t know the resources out there. He’d finally got our first swerve chassis up and running in late November when I asked which library he was using. He responded that he didn’t know that was an option. Anyway, there’s lots of resources out there. Utilize them. Check out 364’s Base Falcon Swerve code. We worked with YAGSL for our 2023 robot code. We’ve got a decent amount of documentation in our OA build blog.
In terms of maintenance issues, there’s just more motors and failure points. We’ve run into CAN connection issues. We found our early that some wiring wasn’t secure enough. We may solder more connections next year to secure things even better.
We had 6 total swerve modules for this season (no practice bot, 2 backup modules fully assembled) but never had to drop a module out and replace. We did practice this procedure once while making another repair in our shop. We do replace the tread on the SDS swerve wheels. That is not a popular job, but we do it between events. We have to clean quite a bit of carpet debris out of the swerve modules regularly.
At first we aligned the wheels when initializing the robot. Once we were using the CANcoders for wheel position, it was no longer an issue. Secure the magnets for encoders. For the SDS modules, there are instructions. We haven’t noticed any big issues with drift, but my programming team may be adjusting things in the code that I’m not aware of.
There was a learning curve, but none of the steps were as insurmountable as we once thought. Code had lots of example to look to online, maintenance and assembly was easier than the AM14U in some ways, electrical can be finicky so use good connectors and route wires with care. We though it would be tough for our driver to pick up a different style, but a little drive practice and collaboration on controls with code team and he was good to go.