I have looked online, but cannot find anything, One of my teams wants to have a 6-wheel drive base, I cannot find an option to add the 5th & 6th motors for it. We are using the block coding. Has anyone ever done this before?
Programming a 6-wheel drive base can be very easy depending on how the robot is constructed, because it depends on how many motors the drive base uses rather than how many wheels it has.
1 motor could be used per 3 wheels. Or 2 motors could be used per 3 wheels. These two are still 2-motor drives or 4-motor drives, which VEXcode has in built drive functions for.
The harder one would be using 3 motors per 3 wheels (or a motor per wheel), since there is no motor drive for it. You would want to use motor groups, which would allow you to have as many motors as you would like. Each side would be it’s own motor group.
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Looking at the VEXcode V5 blocks software, it appears that there are only options for 2-motor or 4-motor drivetrain groups. That being said a 6-motor drivetrain group is not listed or possible so you’re going to have to code each motor individually instead.
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I’m pretty sure you can use the (new) motor groups to speed up that process. So you only have to code 2 motor groups, one for each side.
that appears to be the solution to the question asked .
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Does the motor group allow three per side?
I have not looked at that since the motor group function was introduced. If it is, can you give example screen shot for configuration?
Turns out not. I hadn’t use motor group much, but others I know had and I was on the assumption that you could motor as many motors as you would like together. It seems odd it limits it to two.
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I know I looked over it a long while ago (thank you covid!) and I think it satisfy the needs of most teams in a away that is easy to understand.
Thanks for the confirmation!
One potential solution for 3 motors might be to set each side to a function using the MyBlocks tab with a speed variable: that’d allow you to move forwards, backwards, and turn if the two sides of the robot are set to different functions.
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Was anybody able to accomplish this using blocks? If so can you post a screenshot of your code please. We have been using block programming and students are seeing the value of a six motor drive now. If not can you set up two drive trains to one controller? I think we used to do that with the v4.
Does this work? I am doing 6 motor drive for the first time and have no idea on how to program it.
Here’s a similar program to the one I showed
DriveControlDemo.v5blocks (38.3 KB)
This one can swap directions and control types, but doesn’t have a speed control option like my team’s actual code does
You will want to change motor directions to match your drive’s gearing
And yes, it’s a proven code
I’ll get to work on a speed control version
What is speed control?
Pressing buttons to change drive speed, mainly to increase accurracy when aiming launch-type mechanisms
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I believe i know how to program that, but i dont really need it.
Yeah, I’ll make it for you to download if you ever find you need it.
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Don’t write code for other people. Helping them through a problem or providing example pseudocode is fine, but don’t write code for them to download and use themselves.
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I’m not planning on coding a whole robot for anyone, just helping them learn the basics behind certain ways of coding. For example, how to multiply a joystick input by a less-than-one variable to reduce the speed of a drive for precision purposes
But I’ll keep in mind from now on to let others code for themselves with ideas to help them