Connecting Two Cortexs?

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
#1

Hey, so i was wondering if there was any possible way to bridge two VEX cortexs. Im running low on motor ports so I’d like to be able to bridge the two and see to it that they are semi-secure.
Thanks.

#2

Have you looked at using y cables ?

I don’t know of any official methods to connect them, but you could communicate by wiring a digital out from one to a digital in from the other. Would need a good bit of programming to do some more complex things with it.

#3

you are only allowed 10 motors normally and hydraulics or 12 motors without hydralics

#4

pneumatics. Little bit of difference, but if you used hydraulics and it leaked, then theres gonna be a big difference in your bank account

#5

I’m not talking about competition.

#6

So you can send messages back and forth with UART fairly easily.

#7

Any idea how to connect Uart and how to program it?

#8

See this.
https://vexforum.com/t/communicating-between-two-cortex-dual-cortex-robot/24236/1

#9

O wow I had completely forgotten you had done that one. I was going to offer to spend time tomorrow putting code together with a pair of borrowed cortex’s. You just seem to have conquered every topic at some point or another. :slight_smile:

#10

Can’t you just use a VEX Expander?
It would give you 4 more motor ports. You can also y cable some motors together. To get more breakers, you could also use multiple expanders.

#11

This may also be relevant.

#12

The power expander doesn’t actually add more ports. It only lets you have a 2nd battery

#13

That P3 protocol you mentioned in that thread seemed very cool. Wanted to try it but never did. A restful or JSON parser would be cool too as the phone bluetooth comms like that.

Now that you are working on improving robot C, any chance you can bundle it in the product as a standard feature??? Get the Bluetooth communication integrated too?

#14

You’re right. Woops.

#15

However, since we seem to be ignoring VRC rules, several power expanders can be y-cabled together if the motors are used to add power to a mechanism rather than add mechanisms. If more than 8 mechanisms (I’d say stay away from y-cables on 2 wire ports) are needed, then yes, another Cortex is needed, unless someone wants to figure out a way to modify 393s to be daisy chained.

#16