I have a couple of Cortexes that appear to have one or two fried (non-functional) ports. It’s murder trying to plug those tiny plugs into each port in turn in a cortex. Is there a test rig available that allows you to plug one large plug into your Cortex that plugs into all the ports in one go?
No, because youd be reciving power from alot of ports at once, its not that difficult to test them individually. If you were to test not all at once, then a simple soldering job wouldnt be that hard to diy
You are undoubtedly correct, but the cortex would no longer be legal for VRC competition. There is no soldering allowed.
Use this part and chop off the corner pins. 805-43-015-10-012000 Mill-Max Manufacturing Corp. | Connectors, Interconnects | DigiKey
https://media.digikey.com/Photos/Mill-Max%20Mfg%20Photos/MFG_805-43-xxx-10-012000.jpg
The point is to solder together a Cortex test rig, not solder on the Cortex itself.
What i meant would be to solder wires together, such that one wire would be essentially permanently y cabled to 8 other 3 wire connectors
I can’t see a point in this. In my opinion you would only use this a few times. Unless you are constantly changing cortexes there would be little use.
I could see value in making a bundled cable that splits out to 10 motor contact points, each clearly labeled, then mounting that cable to a simple frame which may include quick and easy to change motor mounts. It would be easy to bolt down a cortex, plug in the cable bundle, then test each port independently very easily by plugging into the labeled extensions rather than the cortex itself. This could also be set up to test a variety of sensors in a uniform way.
I agree there’s value in that kind of plug arrangement. It’s the sort of thing I do when building devices outside of VEX. I found some gang plugs that fit each of the port plugins, and thought about doing it specifically for easy swap out in testing.
As to using it in competition, however, I remember there was a Q&A asking whether such a gang plug would be competition legal, and the answer was “no.”
In a quick look I haven’t found the Q&A. But it’s not a VEX supplied wire, so we don’t really need an official ruling. Still somewhat useful, (mostly by shops with lots of Cortex units) just not in competition.