Vex Encoder

The vex 393 motor encoder (for the FRC legal motor) appears to be out of stock: http://www.vexrobotics.com/276-1321.html
Anybody have any idea when they’ll be back? As a side note, does anybody here know if you can read that encoder to the cRIO easily?
Are there alternative servos which would be legal under the FRC rules. We’re especially looking for something which can keep track of it’s absolute shaft position from 0-360 even as it rotates multiple times. A vex motor + encoder fit the bill for that, although we would have to ensure it was correctly positioned at power on because of the relative nature of an encoder.

  • Alex

Hi
I posted some initial java code for a stand alone class (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1235109&postcount=7) followed by some notes.
In the end we did not use the 393 motors on our elevator. Longer term I am will get this code working more reliably since I am sure the 393s will have a place in future robots.
Pat

We ran two on our hood last year. Unsure if code is already posted, I’ll bug the guy that handles it.

The code is a tad messy in that we didn’t know what i2c registers corresponded to what exactly, so he just played with it long enough to figure it out. Initializing two was the difficult part.

Now Vex has documentation posted as to what registers are what, so it’d be much, much easier to do again. We’re not using them this year, so we won’t go back and clean it up.