V5 Information Gathered

AirplaneManiac · March 26, 2018, 8:29am

OK, here are some responses to things brought up:

Controller:
You guys will really like this thing. The screen did not alter button positions at all. The relationship of joysticks to buttons to the handle are all very similar to what you are used to. When designing we bought every gaming controller known to man. We realized quickly there were two distinct camps and we weren’t going to be able to please everyone (Xbox camp and PS/Logitech camp). We didn’t go to far away from our current layout but made subtle ergonomic improvements and took significant cost out of the controller, even with the LCD screen. Fun fact: the screen is the EXACT screen from VEX IQ.

The batteries and radio are integrated into the controller, just like the PS4 controller. You will notice the current competition port to support the current field control system and 2 smart ports. One is for the second controller and one is for the future field control system that has yet to be designed. The battery life is very, very good and a fully charged controller should last an entire competition day even without plugging it in between matches. The battery regulations are getting very stringent and by integrating the battery into the product you can air ship the battery with the product with no restrictions.

How many of you like the team competition switch to simulate a match? I, for one, hate it so we integrated it into the controller. You will be able to “host” a practice match from your controller and invite other team numbers to join your “match”. You can change the timers for skills, etc. I am very excited about the possibilities of this feature. The screen is essential for this functionality. Additionally, you can select your programs and switch programs from your controller. You can get debug information and will be able to program what displays.

Motor:

No, you will not be able to replace the brushes. These are welded motor cans at the factory (I’m talking about the base motor we purchase, not the entire motor assembly). These brushes will wear way later than your current failure timing on the 393 motors. Additionally, you will not need to replace motors for your competition robot every year as the performance will be consistent from year to year. The motor output is meant for both the 1/8" and 1/4" shafts and the mounting screws are #8. There is no longer a need for the #6 screws in V5. There were some questions about plastic gears. We have plastic gears wehre we need them and steel ones where we need them. Planetary gearsets significantly reduce the load on each individual gear, especially the input sun gear. We made both steel and plastic input sun gears and the plastic ones are performing marvelously so we decided on those for production.

Pneumatics:
Yes, your current pneumatics will be compatible with V5. During the transition years you will have to trade off pneumatics for number of motors just like now. Your 8 motors will get reduced if you use pneumatics.

269 and 393 Motors:
By rule, they will not be legal if you use the V5 brain. This is to protect you from yourselves. While the brain can control the 393 motor it is at significantly reduced capacity specifically for classroom usage. Our estimation is we have over 1 million 393 motors in classrooms today and rendering those useless just because we wanted a better motor for competition was a non starter for us.

Regarding the connector selection, it was a really simple goal: ANYTHING other than standard hobby connectors. If we didn’t have so many sensors out in the community I would have pushed for eliminating them in the new system all together.

We reviewing what our requirements were for all of the use cases and the fact that we were going to a higher voltage and RS485 communication protocol it seemed obvious the RJ11 was the connector of choice.

In our analysis the RJ11 was the best commercially available connector that fit our needs. We really wanted teams to be able to make their own cables so this solution seemed the best.

Of course, we could have just done a custom one, but then we would have had some of you on here accuse us of just trying to get more money from you by making you buy them from us…

Regarding the partner controller, there will NOT be a separate part for the partner controller. You will be allowed to use two regular controllers, however. This decision was based on several factors, the most being it just didn’t make much sense as the new system architecture made the two almost exactly the same anyway. In the Cortex use case, the partner Joystick is much, much simpler than the main Joystick.

Oh and please do not use the word Cortex with this new brain. It is called the V5 Brain. There is no Cortex microcontroller in the V5 Brain. We have been calling the main parts V5 BRain, V5 Controller, V5 Motor, V5 Battery, and V5 Robot Radio.

Yes the connectors for the motor are RJ11 connectors.

We will have standard cable lengths like VEX IQ AND a bulk cable option with connectors and a crimper sold directly by VEX so you can make your cables the exact length you want. As far as rules for VRC, I don’t remember where we settled on using commercial cables, but I expect that should be allowed. I’m not certain the curled cable types will be legal, but equivalent cables to the bulk cable VEX provides should fall under the current rules today as legal. Again, we have not finalized this level of detail in the game manual yet.

The battery connections are custom 1 x 4 Molex connectors based on their industrial 2x2 design. the battery has the charging circuit inside and does not have an integrated cable. So the battery and the brain have the same connector.

As far as software, there will be a full blown (well not ALL of the libraries) C++ inside VEX Coding studio in addition to the blocks and code safe text. The blocks and code safe text will be back and forth compatible to assist in the transition from block to text programming. So there will be three languages inside VEX Coding Studio to start. I suspect we will add more as the community requests it. Also, RobotMesh and PROS will be supported by those organizations right at launch as we have been keeping them in the loop on the development.

We are still doing a bunch of verification testing on the motor curves, but 10W of power at max power is the min we are getting now. This is 10W over a large range of speeds since we are using an oversized motor and limiting its output with the motor firmware. You should be able to get 10W across 50% of the speed range. This will make it seem like you have way more than 2.5 times the power of the 393 motor. So there are no PTCs in this design as we are protecting everything with firmware like we do in VEX IQ.

Also, the motor controller’s FETs used in the V5 motor are running at a significantly higher chopping frequency so in pure PWM mode you have a linear response. However, I think you will find the closed loop speed control mode and position control modes will be much more useful.

I will get the particulars on the communication rates, but please remember that the motor has its own processor so the communication rate between the motor and the brain does not need to be that fast because the motor is doing a lot of the math for things like PID, etc. Again, I don’t have those numbers committed to memory so I will get them when I get back to the office on Monday.

I will add more as I find them or they are posted in the thread.

Arrash · March 27, 2018, 5:31pm

This saves so much time. I believe Paul also made a post regarding price estimates for each of the individual components. If you could add that in as well, there is no doubt in my mind that It will gain a lot of interest and prevent a ton of web-wandering.

AirplaneManiac · March 27, 2018, 6:51pm

I want to try to be more clear about a few things:

The VRC Game Design Committee will limit the amount of V5 Smart Motors teams with the V5 system can use. That limit is expected to be 8. By rule, the amount of 393 motors V5 teams will be able to use is exactly 0. As a fellow competitor, I am confident this is fair and reasonable. The limit will be in place for the 2018-19 season and probably the 2019-2020 season, but we will re-evaluate during the 18-19 season.

The coupon code for the motors is per system trade-in. If you trade in 3 systems, then you will get three orders worth of coupon codes for the motor discount. I hope that makes sense.

The motors are significantly more robust than the 393 motors. The 393 motors were designed during a time when teams were using much less power and the robots were not all that demanding. Over the last 8 years the motors have just been pushed beyond what we ever thought they would. We did not make that same mistake on the V5 motor. Here are some attached pics. You can see that the
“cartridge” is a 2 stage planetary gearbox and is fully assembled. There will be three cartridges: 100 RPM, 200 RPM, and 600 RPM. The 100 RPM will be in the stock motors. The 200 and 600 will be add-on cartridges that you can purchase. No more grease on your hands from changing gears.

The encoder and motor controller are completely isolated from the planetary gearbox on the back side of the motor. Cables are separate so motors don’t have an integrated cable to go bad. Since these are smart motors, we are using the V5 firmware to monitor everything. we even have a motor life monitor that tells you when you are getting near the motor life based on mean current draw and motor rotations. Our goal for this motor was it would fail when the brushes fail, which is the end of life for motors. we expect teams will have to buy significantly less motors than in the past so your total spend on motors should go down over the long haul.

One thing I forgot to mention about the Trade-In is that with each trade-in you will get a one time use (read: one order only) 30% discount on the V5 motors (unlimited amount in that one order) to help offset the costs of transition.

I also want to be clear that we are working with the RECF on rules during the next couple of years to make the playing field more level for teams that do not transition to V5 right away. The game rules are not finalized yet, but I can tell you that for the 2018-2019 VRC game V5 users will NOT get 12 motors. They will be allowed to use significantly less motors than 12. Many of us on the GDC are extremely technical and have been in competition robotics for many, many years so we are balancing the allotment of motors to reduce the advantage V5 teams will have.

Also, regarding the battery, it is different chemistry than NiMH and at a different voltage so the amp-hour rating by itself is quite meaningless. Additionally, the usable range of NiMH before you had to charge was at about 30% of its total capacity because of the voltage dropoff curve. LiFe have a much flatter curve. We are also “performance” leveling in the V5, similar to what we do in the VEX IQ brain to help give more consistent behavior at different charge levels. You will get more usable power per robot per match with one V5 battery than you do with two 3000 mAh NiMH batteries.

As far as the radio is concerned, we use narrowband 2.4 (as opposed to Wifis broadband) and the current technology chipsets at 5.8 do not support narrowband. Narrowband is how we can have multiple robots on the field without interference at an event like VEX Worlds, etc. Broadband signals should not interfere with the narrowband 2.4 we use. If you think that is really happening, then you should check a different set of radios as you MIGHT have a radio hardware issue. When we tested 100 pairs of VEXnet 2.4 in our building, it completely rendered our broadband company wireless useless, but the robots never lost connection.

For those of you debating the “V5 is pay to play” vs. “Cortex is old and it’s about time” …

This is the exact thing we have debated for the last few years. Not developing new technology in today’s high tech world will render VEX non-competitive with newer companies trying to enter the education space. While forcing our current customers and community to constantly upgrade will lose their trust. It is a very fine line to walk. I feel pretty strongly that 8 years is a little too long to come up with new technology for education. Many of you who only use VEX EDR for competition don’t see that for every one of you there are 2 to 3 people using VEX EDR in the classroom. We must make the VEX EDR system versatile enough to work inside the classroom, not be too scary for those completely new to robotics, and advanced enough to challenge the high end competition teams. We feel V5 does a better job of satisfying those conditions.

As far as price, I believe that VEX has the best value in the market for the majority of the items. There are some fairly old products, using pretty old processors that are way too pricey for my liking, but those will be addressed after we get the new system up and running.

There will be a trade in program. It will consist of turning in a Cortex, Joystick, and two radios for a discount on the V5 System Bundle. Right now the Retail on the V5 system Bundle is going to be around $400 and consist of a V5 Brain, V5 Controller, V5 Robot Radio, USB A to Micro cable, V5 Battery (with cable), & Charger. The trade-in discount will be somewhere between $150 and $200 off. Details of the trade-in will come after the Beta as we are working out how the trade-in will work for customers outside North America and those working through resellers.

The kit formulations are not finalized as we will be asking our Beta testers to make recommendations, however we will have the following kits:

Classroom Starter Kit - $550
Classroom Super Kit - $1,200 (will include V5 Vision Sensor)
Classroom Add-On Kit to upgrade from Starter to Super (still tentative)

Competition Starter Kit - TBD
Competition Super Kit - TBD
Competition Add-On Kit #1 - TBD (upgrade from Classroom)
Competition Add-On Kit #2 - TBD (upgrade from Comp Starter to Super)
Competition Add-On Kit #3 - TBD (upgrade above Comp Super)

V5 Motor - not to exceed $35
V5 Vision Sensor - not to exceed $70
V5 Brain - not to exceed $200
V5 Controller - not to exceed $100 (no need for batteries or radio as they are built in)
V5 battery - not to exceed $50 (LiFe design at 13.2V)

I will have Dillon start another thread to get some of your input on what you think should be in the competition kits as we value our community’s input and opinions.

That pricing is not for what you think it is. We are reformulating every kit based on what we have learned from the classroom teachers and competition teams usage over the last 7 years.

The kit pricing will be VERY similar to what the Cortex kit pricing is with better features and enhanced robustness.

Additionally, the individual controller and brain pricing will be lower than Cortex and the Joystick today.

We will still be selling every current Cortex compatible part and Cortex systems for the foreseeable future. However, the motors, controller, vision sensor, robot radio, and battery will not be backwards compatible with the Cortex system.

Every current sensor, except the flashlight, will be compatible with V5. The 393 (and 269) motor and the servo will work for limited power applications in the classroom, but will not be recommended for competition use.

Wiredcat_Robotics · March 28, 2018, 11:11am

The two ports mentioned about the joystick - one being for a partner joystick and the other for competition… does this mean that the programming module will no longer be useful?

OscarMNOVA12 · March 28, 2018, 11:22am

The V5 has a micro-usb port for programming last I checked, so that’s a no.

JuiceBox · March 28, 2018, 12:08pm

I’m not 100% sure but I do remember reading that the micro USB port would be used for programming and charging.