Hello. We are a VEX Robotics team in highschool. This is our first year and we’re new to this project. We are using the clawbot. We have already learned to code and are able to use our robot. However, we don’t understand the significance of the power given for the motors. The examples of coding you …

I am going to assume you are using cortex, but please correct me if you are using V5. In theory, the motors, can be set to any speed from 127 to -127. 127 is the max power and 0 is at rest. The 63 is used because it is half of 127(in case you don’t want to use max power), but once again, you can put…

The numbers represent the speed of the motors. 127 is hogh speed spinning clockwise, 63 is half speed and 0 means the motor will not spin at all. It is the same for negative just the motor will spin counter clockwise. You could set the numbers anywhere between -127 and 127 and the motor will spin as…

7517H, in response, we are using the cortex. However, when we explain to our teacher what we’re doing, we always say that the power level is 127. This is also his first year working with this project. He asks us to explain what that means with units but we can’t because we just put it as 127 in ou…

So it’s just raw value, it doesn’t represent a specific unit of energy.

SBC, I realize that I may have confused you with what I was asking. I understand that the 127 is full power, 63 half, and 0 as resting. The negatives make the motors spin counter clockwise. We have also experimented with changing the speeds because our robot is inconsistent when we code it. However,…

Forgive me if I’m off my rocker here I believe the -127 to 127 input is a PWM input (I have absolutely no idea what this represents) From what I can tell it does not directly control power (in a linear sense) Kind of like what @Mr.Sir-Lening has said. ie. 127 might be “full power” but 63 might not …

Thank you. That helps Gameoa. If we have any questions later, we hope everyone could help once again.

[image] Bartholomew: no difference with the changes from the the regular power. Show us code, and pics. Different “power” should result in different motor speed, unless code has errors or bot has issues.

Those value actually represent voltage which is electric potential difference across the motor. Essentially, increasing that number will send more voltage to the motor meaning that the motor will dissipate more energy (spin faster) because its resistance is constant in the absence of a load.

I believe that 127 (and 0) gives “2 to the seventh” PWM (so voltage) levels, so seemingly continuously variable. There are several forum threads on this, just have to dream up search terms. Off topic, forum needs real wikis.

Power Level of Motors

VEX V5 Technical Support

jpearman May 9, 2019, 3:26am 15

In simple terms the value is controlling motor voltage, more accurately the pwm (pulse width modulation) control of the motor.

several years ago we did lots of testing and analysis of 393 motors.
here are some relevant threads, many links are now broken due to forum upgrade.

How do you code a 393 motor in v5 using a 3 wire port?