Welcome to our second Engineering 101 Live Session. My name is Matt, and today we're going to be discussing the difference between the 5.5 watt V5 Smart Motor and the 11 watt V5 Smart Motor. The need for today's session is due to the VRC now releasing that the 5.5 watt motors are legal in next year's VRC competition. So today, we're just going to be discussing the differences between the 5.5 watt from a technical standpoint and where you might want to apply these new motors.

So without further ado, my name is Matt. Let's get into our second Engineering 101 Live Session. I have a slideshow prepared that we will be going through to facilitate today's session. This is our second session of the Engineering 101, so I have a little bit of background on what each motor was designed for.

Our 11 watt Smart Motors, which you all know and love if you are from the VEX Robotics Competition, were designed for the VEX Robotics Competition. It's more powerful compared to the 5.5 watt motor and is intended to be used in your competition setting. It also has a swappable gear cartridge, which we can see here. You'll notice it's a lot larger compared to our 5.5 watt, but we'll get into that later. The 11 watt had that swappable gear cartridge so that you can make your motor a lot more versatile and get a lot more out of it. We had the three different cartridges for either gearing up your motor or gearing it down.

Now we're going to move on to the 5.5 watt Smart Motor. This smart motor was designed to be used in EXP. It's less powerful compared to our 11 watt smart motor, and as I said, it's designed to be used in more of a classroom competition setting because it's perfectly engineered, almost like the 11 watt smart motor. We just wanted to add another layer of complexity and customization to further develop the challenge. So now we have this 5.5 watt smart motor. You'll notice that it now has a fixed gear cartridge, meaning that there is no swappable gear cartridge inside of that motor. Because of this, what you see is basically what you get. But with the reduced size, as we can see here and which we will explore later, it allows this motor to be a lot more competitive due to its compact nature.

We'll be going over all the pros and cons of each motor and see where each motor has strengths over the other. Moving on, first we need to get an understanding of our motor basics. So the difference between power, torque, speed, and encoders, all of which are employed by our V5 Smart Motors.

Now, pardon my phrasing with the different motors, as I can show you here we have the two different motors. They are both of the V5 smart motor classification. It just comes down to individual power rating. So we have the 11 watt, which we can see is a little bit bigger compared to the 5.5 watt, which is a little smaller.

Back to our basics for our motor comprehension, we need to know these specific words to understand what is fully happening behind the scenes. Power in regards to motors is the rate at which a motor can do work. So with the 11 watt, this means that our 11 watt motor has a rate of 11 watts that it can do work on its environment. Likewise, our 5.5 watt is just that—it has an output of 5.5 watts, roughly half of the power of our 11 watt smart motor.

Next, we have torque, which is very important when it comes to learning about different motors. Torque is a measure of the twisting force produced by the motor. Whenever you come to securing a screw to a build, you've experienced torque many times. That's the turning force required to drive that screw into your build. Likewise, with our motor, we can see that our motors have specific encoded directions, and the direction that the motor will turn has a measurement of the twisting force produced by the motor.

Thank you for joining us for this session. We hope you found it informative and helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

We look forward to seeing you in our next session. Have a great day!

So our two motors, while they are created similarly, they are not equal. Our larger motor has a higher torque, whereas our smaller motor has a lower torque. Again, it's just important to know that the torque is the measurement of that twisting force applied by the motor. The higher the torque, the more likely that motor is to get something to turn.

Next, we have speed in terms of our motors. Speed is a measure of how many revolutions the motor can make per minute. Now, we're not talking about the motor itself making the turns per minute. We're talking about the insert that our motor is outputting into its environment. So that speed is measured by how fast that insert can spin.

Lastly, we will be looking at the encoder. An encoder is a device that measures the position or rotation of the motor shaft and produces feedback for precise control. Both of our motors, our 5.5 watt and our 11 watt, have this encoder embedded into themselves. If you'll remember back from Cortex with the old 393 motor, you had to attach your motor controller encoder externally, but now through advanced design with these powerful motors, we have that device measuring our feedback for precise control built in already.

In addition to this feedback that we're getting, we shall also be getting position, current, voltage, power, torque, efficiency, and temperature through the use of this encoder. It will allow us to better control our motor whenever it comes to fine-tuning our code.

So now we're going to go ahead and get into the actual characteristics of each motor. I have up on the screen the individual characteristics of both the 11 watt as well as the 5.5 watt. We're just going over all of this information to get a better understanding of how the motors function in the background, just to provide the helpful information that they are a viable strategy to use in this year's game. Now that we have that new role of the 88-watt power cap, we can use a varying degree of our motors.

First, we're going to look at the 11-watt motor just very quickly. So our power, as denoted by our name, is the V5 Smart Motor 11 Watts. Our peak power is 11 watts, meaning that through the peak or continuous power, our motor will deliver 11 watts of uninterrupted power. Likewise, with the 5.5 watt, as we said earlier, it is half of our 11 watt smart motor, and it can basically do half of our 11 watt motor. So it's basically like one half of it. You can have a lot more of the 5.5 watts on your build. As we will get into a couple of examples down the road, it's a great tool and just adds another level of complexity whenever it comes to competing.

As we said, our twisting force given by our motors, we're going to explore later. Off the bat, our 11 watt motor has a stall torque of 2.1 Newton meters. That means our motor will overcome a static turning point of 2.1 Newton meters. Now, it's actually a really cool kind of measurement. The torque is that twisting force, and it's measured in pounds around that rotation. So because we have a 2.1 Newton meter torque with our 11 watt motor, that's a pretty big number, and it actually allows for a lot of uses with the VRC competition.

Now, our 5.5 watt Smart motor has a smaller stall torque of 0.5 Newton meters. Now that's okay because since it's a lot more compact, it'll be a lot more versatile in each build. But it's just something good to take note of because the 11 watt motor has these swappable gear cartridges. The torque can change whenever you are using a different gear cartridge, whether that be for higher torque or higher speed. But with our 5.5 watt motor, that torque is going to be consistent at that 0.5 Newton meters.

Now, with both motors in this next category of speed, you'll notice that our 5.5 watt smart motor is basically the same as our 11 watt smart motor with the 18 to 1 gear cartridge. So our two motors basically will spin at the exact same max RPM.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope this information helps you in your projects. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

So you're not really missing out on any of the speed whenever it comes to applying this in your build. Lastly, with that encoder that's already built in, we have both of them rated roughly at the same 900 ticks per revolution, which allows for that very, very helpful position determination through the motor encoder that is inside of it.

Now that we've gone over the electronic specifications of each individual motor, we're going to go ahead and get into the physical characteristics. So we've gone over all of the torque, the power, the speed, the encoder, and how the motors are similar but different from one another and how they will have very specific roles to play in this year's game.

As we can see, our 11-watt smart motor is a lot bigger than our 5.5-watt smart motor. Our measurements are gathered from width by length, by the thickness. Notice that the width and the length for both of our smart motors are roughly the same. They are roughly 2.25 and 2.8 for our width and our length. But what's different now is our height. The height of our 11-watt smart motor, if we take a measuring device, is 1.3 inches or roughly 33.3 millimeters. Now, with our 5.5-watt smart motor, we'll notice that it is under one inch. It's basically one inch exactly.

This is really, really big news because whenever it comes to actually implementing our smart motors on a build, you can now actually fit one of the V5 5.5-watt Smart motors inside of a C-channel. That is really, really cool because you can make a lot more compact builds. If you were to mount another piece of metal directly on top of that motor right inside of that C-channel, it will fit snug and it'll fit a lot more compact as compared to what you have been using with the 11-watt smart motor. Trying to insert our 11-watt smart motor into one of the C-channels that you are very familiar with, you'll see that our 11-watt cannot fit inside of that C-channel due to the thickness of our smart motor. But because we're under that one-inch classification now, it'll fit snug and it'll look really, really good whenever it comes to a build.

Because our motors were the exact same length, due to the fact that they are now skinnier with the 5.5-watt motor, we basically have cut out almost an inch. So we're at two and a half inches from the length of our C-channel to the back of our motor versus three and a half inches from our C-channel to the back of the motor. This is really, really cool because now you can fit a lot more snug builds.

Very similarly, due to the smaller size, our 5.5-watt smart motor is now a lot lighter when comparing it to our 11-watt smart motor. Our 5.5-watt smart motor is 0.25 pounds, so it's almost half of the weight of an 11-watt smart motor. This will come into play and be very important whenever it comes to different lifting mechanisms. Now, because our motors have strengths and weaknesses in different areas, the weight of the motors now adds another factor to consider. So it's really cool when it comes to comparing both of these smart motors.

Whenever it comes to both the electronics behind the scenes, as well as what's straight in front of you when determining which is which, it's really easy. Whenever you get your hands on each, you'll notice that our 5.5-watt doesn't have that swappable gear insert. It's a lot skinnier and a lot lighter. That's just some things to keep an eye out for. Whenever they're placed flat on the table, they are roughly the same size.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our smart motors. We hope this information helps you in your future builds. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to reach out.

And yeah, so now we're going to get into some of the applications of the V5 Smart motor, the 5.5 watt variation. Since we're all used to the 11 watt smart motor and we've been using that for the time being in all of the past VRC games, we're not really going to cover that one too much. Instead, we'll be looking at where our 5.5 watt smart motor thrives compared to the 11 watt smart motor.

So it's basically kind of a measurement of whether you want a motor to do more things or do less things but more powerfully. That's really how it's measured when it comes to determining these smart motor positions. Our 5.5 watt smart motor will thrive where low load motion is needed. Now, what exactly does this mean? Low load motion basically means we need a motor to allow something to spin. This is great for an indexer, a lifting mechanism using gears, and it's also applicable in an intake position since we just need that motor to spin to get stuff in. It's a great place to start looking at applying these.

So we have our 5.5 smart motor, 5.5 watt in an indexer utilizing a rack and pinion system. We have our 5.5 watt potentially on a lifting system. We can notice the gears that it'll be using to lift it effectively. Lastly, we have our 5.5 watts in an intake position. Let's actually see these in person and how they can be used effectively. So if you bear with me, let's get our motors on the table.

Now I have two very, very similar builds. They are both the TrainingBots, just with different motors at play. So our first bot here, if you can see the motors that are underneath, they are thicker. I can see that they have these swappable gear cartridges, meaning that these must be the 11 watt Smart motors on this build. We can see our motors are a lot skinnier compared to the ones we have seen before. I don't see any gear cartridges inside; I just see that single piece of metal. So this is a 5.5 watt smart motor.

Both of the builds are very, very similar in terms of weight, but we will be exploring the pushing power or torque that will be employed by both of the Smart motors just to show where they will be good and where they'll lack. So I have a static weight that we will be using here. It's just a plastic bin with some C channels inside. Whenever we turn on our brains, I have a simple program here that we're going to test how well our different motors can actually push this weight.

With our 11 watt Smart Motors, because we know that the torque is a lot higher on these smart motors, we should see our bot push it pretty effectively. So whenever I start our program, it should move it forward. I can see that it's going to push it all the way until it gets out of sight. That's just as we anticipated because we know that our torque is high. It should push this weight with no problem.

Now let's see this example again, utilizing the 5.5 watt Smart Motors. We have two Smart motors, two 5.5 watt Smart motors on our training bot. This TrainingBot is of very similar weight, size, and shape compared to our previous one, but because we're using these 5.5 watt Smart motors, we should see our robot struggle a lot more due to that lack of power. So if I start that program up again, it's the same program just going to push. I can see that our wheels are spinning, but they're not going anywhere. You'll notice that we had the same size wheels on both of our robots, but because they had the two different motors, it provided a very different outcome. One was able to push it pretty easily, as we saw previously, because of that higher torque, just utilizing the simple gear cartridges that are in there. Whereas we saw now our 5.5 watts do not push it as easily.

So our 5.5 watt Smart Motors, like we said before, basically thrive where low load motion is needed.

Now we can see that our load is experienced by trying to push this weight over a distance. So on your VRC robots, it may not be a good idea to have just two 5.5 watt Smart Motors pushing. You may need additional help such as a gear train, such as multiple motors in tandem, and so on.

Now we're going to look at another example that we have. So I'll put everything to the side. As I was saying before, because our 5.5 watt Smart Motors are exactly half of the power of an 11 watt smart motor, two 5.5 watt Smart Motors will produce the same power and roughly the same torque as one 11 watt small smart motor. So what you can do is, as I said, you can put multiple motors in tandem now so that whenever you want to perform an operation such as we mentioned, an indexer, a lifting arm, or an intake with two motors in tandem, it's basically like you are using one 11 watt smart motor. Now you have that added benefit of it being in a more compact case. It is easier to throw on your build and you don't have to worry about the separate gear cartridges.

So that's our second example that we have. And as again, as we were saying with the 5.5 watt Smart Motors, you can power more mechanisms now in VRC, with the new rule being 88 watts per your one robot, you can have up to 16 of the 5.5 watt Smart Motors, but you'll have less force and speed per mechanism. Now, the motors that you know and love, the 11 watt motors, they'll give you more power to fewer mechanisms with that 88 watt cap. That'll be about eight motors. So utilizing the 11 watt Smart Motors will be useful whenever it comes to higher force or speed that will be needed. So whether that be a launching mechanism, whether that be on your drive train, it really depends on the kind of system that you are wanting as well as what you need.

In the absence of all of the pneumatics, adding these 5.5 watt Smart Motors is just a great way to add another layer of complexity. Lastly, I have another simple demonstration here. You'll notice on this year VRC Over Under Herobot Stryker, I’m going to clear off the table so we have some room. Stryker is a great place to start exploring with the different motors. So I have gone ahead and made a couple of modifications to our Stryker here just with all of this information now of the different motors of the 5.5 watt, as well as the 11 watt.

With our Herobot Stryker, you'll notice that we still have our 11 watt motors on our drivetrain as our drivetrain will be carrying the most load of our entire build. We have our 11 watt smart motor on our arm mechanism that will require a lot of force in order to drive it during our game. But you'll notice my new spot that I have made an adjustment is with our intake. Remember that we mentioned before, intakes are a great place that you can add these 5.5 watt smart motors as it's not really where you will be experiencing higher load than what you would be elsewhere. So in order to free up a motor spot that you can potentially add somewhere else, I've gone ahead and added a 5.5 watt smart motor just to our intake mechanism that we can demonstrate here once we load up our brain and our simple example.

We can see our 5.5 watt will spin just as intended, just as we want it to. So once it spins the correct direction, it will hold that game object, the tri ball, directly in place. Now this is really cool because again, as I mentioned, it'll hold it and then it'll spin it out just as we want it to. It's a great way to free up all of your spots so that you can add a motor elsewhere.

So as we explored through all of our information, looking at all of the different specifications of our motors, the different physical characteristics, we have these very helpful graphs which are a link in our description as well as in our PD+ thread below. These graphs basically show that our motors have very different power outputs as well as torque output.

In the realm of VRC, this adds another layer of complexity in order to further level the playing field. Teams can now get into the use of the 5.5 watts smart motor to allow their robot to do more things. As I mentioned earlier, through our slideshow, using the 5.5 watt smart motor is like having more motors doing more things less powerfully. In contrast, with the 11 watt smart motor, you can have fewer motors doing fewer things more powerfully. The application of all this is really interesting, and it'll be fascinating to see how it unfolds.

In addition to our new pneumatics for our VRC, this motor pool is on top of the pneumatic. So if you weren't using pneumatic, you can get into the use of the 5.5 watt as well as add the 5.5 watt on top of the pneumatic.

If you have any questions about anything that I've mentioned today, please feel free to either put it in the chat of our session or in our PD+ Community that will be linked shortly after today's session.

I really appreciate everyone attending today. It'll be really cool to see how these things will be used. I hope today's info session was very helpful whenever it comes to learning about the 5.5 watt smart motor, where it can be applied, and why you would want to use it. Why is it different from the 11 watt? Why is it being added now? It's just another great tool.

So yeah, with that, if you have any questions again, please feel free. I think we have one question. How many 5.5 watt motors are allowed in competition? Could you explain a little bit about what the cap means and not only each motor, but also that you can use them together?

Yeah. So in VRC, the new cap lists that you cannot go above 88 watts. This 88 watts is determined by the individual motors. Our 11 watt has that number of 11 watts, meaning you can have 8 of the 11 watt motors because eight times 11 is 88 watts. Alternatively, you can use the 5.5 watt motors, allowing you to double the motor count by utilizing 16 motors, as 16 times 5.5 is 88. That's the different motor count rule. You can have any alternation of the numbers between the two, just as long as you do not go above that 88 watt count limit.

I know the game manual goes into a lot further depth about the different alternate numbers you can have. But off the top of my head, I'm not really good at calculations on the fly, so it's really cool that you can take out an 11 watt here and then that'll free up two spots for motors with the use of two 5.5 watts instead of using only eight motors. Because there are two different motors now in VRC, that is why they switched to the 88 watt limit. I hope that answers your question and that's not like me rambling on.

Yeah. If there's anything else, please let me know.

Thanks everyone for joining. Please feel free to post in the community if you do have any questions. I appreciate everyone's time and I'll see you in the next one. If not.