Motor controller flickering
 

Hello everyone,

We've been having a mostly minor issue with one of our robot functions. Our shooter is a catapult, but instead of having it always tensioned, we tightena loosen the tension via a window motor.

Our problem is that sometimes, when pulling the tension back, or motor will flicker, or skip. I thought it could be a mechanical problem with or mechanism not being perfectly square, but when I traced it back to the motor controller, it appeared the light was flickering between yellow and green very fast.

We changed the battery, thinking it was a voltage problem, but it was still intermittently there. We thought it could be a coding problem, but releasing the tension back works fine, and it sometimes pulls the tension fine too. I'm basically all out of ideas.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

Are you running the Window Motor using a Jaguar and if so have you removed the internal pin?

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

No Jaguar, only Victor or Talon so far.

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

have you double checked that the power distribution board is connected to the correct talon terminals? I had a talon behave similar when it was wired-up incorrectly.

The PD board should be connected to the RED "+" side of the talon. The motor to the WHITE "M+" side of the talon.

-Josh

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

Wild,
You have to tell us which device you were viewing when you saw the indication above. Victor or Talon may give a different indication. It sounds like your PWM cable is not fully inserted or is intermittent.

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

One possibility is that you have a programming bug and are sending the motor both a neutral and a forward signal in the same loop.

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

It is a victor and the issue is not a PWM cable but we'll try and switch it out anyway

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

We had the issue also before calibration, then we simply calibrated all of our Talons and the lights stopped flickering immediately. Look near the light on each speed controller, there is a small little button (use a small screwdriver to press & hold the button and calibrate them to the controller joystick as required ...full forward / then full reverse / then zeroed ), as listed in the speed controller documentation. See then if those lights then stop flickering.

Hope this helps.

Re: Motor controller flickering
 

We went back and looked at our programming, and ended up reducing the wait timer on one of the loops. It mostly fixed thee issue right up!