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Rover Motor Controllers: ODrive + NEO vs Kraken (reliability decision)

Decision note. Tyler's reasoning, captured 2026-08-19. Status: leaning toward Krakens, not final. This is design rationale, not a research report.

The decision

Next year's rover: keep the current ODrive + NEO drivetrain, or switch to Krakens.

The framing that drives it

The whole theme of next year's rover is reliability. And reliability, in practice, means asking: what in our system is going to fail? So the motor-controller choice should be judged on failure points, not just performance.

Why Krakens look better on reliability

1. Fewer wiring hops / fewer failure points. - Current path: power board → ODrive → NEO. That's an extra box (the ODrive) in the middle, and it's ~6 wires per drive to make that chain work. - Kraken path: power board → straight to the Kraken. The controller is integrated into the motor, so the ODrive middle-stage disappears. That collapses to essentially one power run per motor (plus CAN). One wire instead of six.

2. The wheel count is going up, which multiplies the wiring problem. - Going from 4 wheels to 6 adds roughly 12 more big power wires that have to be routed all through the rover body under the ODrive+NEO scheme. - With integrated Kraken motors that drops to about 2 main wires to each unit. Far less heavy wiring snaking through the chassis.

3. Net effect: fewer wires, fewer connectors, fewer intermediate boxes = better redundancy and a simpler, more reliable system overall. Less to come loose, chafe, or fail, which is exactly what the reliability theme is optimizing for.

Open items / to revisit

  • This is the wiring/failure-point case for Krakens. Still worth weighing the other side (cost, control-software rework moving off ODrive, CAN bus load with 6 motors, performance/torque comparison NEO vs Kraken) before it's final.
  • "Plus CAN" per motor: confirm the CAN topology/daisy-chain plan for 6 motors so the wiring win holds up in practice.
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