Victor troubles
 

Ok folks having some really wired problems with my victors to start off no their not brand new but they are from last year they are hooked up in the
12v power distribution spot and are connected using a pwm cable. but when i enable the robot the motors starts spinning in reverse when the joystick is in the 0 position when the joy stick is in the -1 position it stops and when its in the 1 position it goes forward im looking for some insite on what i can do to fix this

Re: Victor troubles
 

It sounds like they're waaaaaaaay out of calibration, or your code is whacked out. I'd suspect code first.

What are you using to program the robot? I'd use a printf() (or the equivalent for your programming language) to dump out what commands you're issuing the Victors in code to make sure it's doing what you want. If it is, then try calibrating them.

Out of curiousity, what are the lights on the Victors doing as this occurs?

Re: Victor troubles
 

that sounds like programming. I use C++, but what I would do is when I "get" the value from the joystick subtract one and that should (emphasis on should) fix it.

Re: Victor troubles
 

This doesn't sound as simple as an offset error, but something a bit more loopy.

It would also help to see the code that commands the Victors.

My IM contact information is in my profile, if you guys want to try and reach me directly, I'm assuming you're competing this weekend, so obviously you're in a time crunch.

Matt

Re: Victor troubles
 

Actually this is our practice bot since are is bagged and tagged and the lights that flash are orange when dissable and then red and orange when enable red when it starts to jolt and spins motor and orange when it is stopped also we use lab view software to program

Re: Victor troubles
 

Sounds like it's your code. Can we see it? What language is it in?

Re: Victor troubles
 

Are the Victors properly set as Victors when you open the Device Reference in Begin.VI?

If they are, or you don't know what that means, please post your Begin.VI and Teleop.VI and let us know which DevRefs refer to the devices in question.

Re: Victor troubles
 

Are they referenced as Servo's?

Re: Victor troubles
 

Attachment 10336
Attachment 10337

Re: Victor troubles
 

Looks like your copy of Labview has not been updated. On your programming computer you need to get the Labview Update and Utilities Update from this page


On your Classmate or other Driver Station computer you need to get the Driver Station Update from the same page.

After updating Labview your Open 2 Motor VI will become a polymorphic VI. This means it will have a box under it like your solenoid VIs do to select the type of motor controller (Jaguar, Victor, CAN Jaguar). Change the box to Victor and you should be good to go with the Drive motors.

Does that solenoid code work properly? If you want to set a single solenoid using one of two buttons you should use a single Solenoid Set VI and an AND to combine the button signals. If they are double solenoids which is what your comments seem to suggest then you may be able to use the code in a similar way to how it is currently written but you will have to pass a device reference for a single solenoid on the appropriate channel to each solenoid set VI, not the same device reference to both.

Re: Victor troubles
 

Don't forget that Victors and Jaguars have a calibrate feature. This is a simple internal learning mode that establishes the extreme throttle positions and center position of your joysticks. If the center calibration is off your motors will move when your joysticks are centered. Since these are not new, consider that someone has calibrated to different center values in the past.

Re: Victor troubles
 

To by knowledge, doesn't Victor calibration involves moving from 0, then back and forth between -1 and 1, then back to 0 to identify maximum forward, maximum reverse, and neutral? I can't quite see how they would be recalibrated to 1 fd, 0 rev, and -1 neutral.

This sounds more like a code issue to me, though I can't see for the life of me how it's happening.

Re: Victor troubles
 

Well, say the Victor interprets 255 as full forward, and 127 as full reverse. In this case, 0 could be perceived as a neutral, or whats really happening, as just a bad command that shuts the Victor off. Likely, the calibration was done poorly OR the output from the Crio got screwed up with bad code, and is sending only good signals between 0 and -1 on the joystick; from 0 to 1, the signal is whack.

Re: Victor troubles
 

Bob and Alex,
In the absence of actual conversion in your code, the speed controllers are capable of "learning" the joystick values from PWM input for full forward and full reverse and will use the center position to set brake/coast mode and zero throttle. Since most resistors in joysticks are +/-20% accurate minimum, if you pass joystick values directly to the controllers, they will not match what was set at the factory. In that case, full throttle may not be achieved, motors will not come to rest when the joystick is centered, etc. Hobby PWM uses values of 0 indicate full throttle in one direction, 254 full throttle in the other direction and 127 for zero throttle.

Re: Victor troubles
 

You may want to verify that the Digital Sidecar is receiving power from the Power Distribution Panel. We had a very similar experience with a Victor - and then found that the circuit breaker powering the Sidecar had been mistakenly removed.(We had pulled several of the breakers to disable portions of the robot during testing, and pulled one too many!)