Using 10 motors with the old micro-controller

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
1

we need to use 10 motors for our robot, but our signal splitter is not working and we don’t know how to use 10 motors with the old micro-controller which has 8 motor ports.
Can anyone tell me how to connect two motors and plug them into one port…
or any other solution…

Thank you :smiley:

2

http://www.vexrobotics.com/products/accessories/control/3-wire-cables.html

You want to order 276-1423.

3

Note on Rick TYler’s post:

The “Y” cables will “tie” the motors together - they can only move in sync. As far as I’m aware, you cannot independently control 10 motors with the microcontroller v.5 (but someone might have to check me on that…)

4

Yes you are correct, unless there is some sort of “hack” I am unaware of, and I’m sure it would be illegal for competition anyway, as I see no way of being able to do it without modifying the wires.

~Jordan

5

There is a hack available here to control up to 15 motors, but as you say, it would not be legal for at least two reasons: It requires a custom PPM cable, and it uses a signal splitter.

It may be possible to drive a servo or motor from a digital I/O port. It would require some pretty crafty coding to handle the pulse timing, but I think it should be possible. It may be slightly easier if you aren’t too picky about speed, where you mostly just need fwd/off/rev (like an ingest mechanism).

Note that this would draw motor power from the regulated 5V supply that runs the microcontroller logic. So if you were to attempt this, I would definitely use a Power Expander between the motor and the digital I/O port.

I am not an expert on Round Up, but I don’t see any rules that say that motors or the power expander can’t be plugged into I/O ports.

Cheers,

  • Dean
6

I tried using the Y-cables, but they don’t work. :confused:
instead of inserting the motor cable to the micro-controller, in inserted the Y-cable and attached two motors to it. But this did not work.

Is there anything that i did wrong?

7

Never mind, i figured out the problem.
I was using the 3 wire extension cable, which looks similar to the Y-cable.

Anyways, thank you everyone :slight_smile: