View Single Post
  #2   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 30-01-2011, 00:38
gouldm2001 gouldm2001 is offline
Registered User
FRC #2550
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: US
Posts: 2
gouldm2001 is an unknown quantity at this point
Re: 4 Motor RobotDrive Errors

So we figured this out this weekend. It was a good lesson learned.

What ended up happening is we tried to write our own robotDrive, but ran into the same problems. We could instantiate 1,2 and 3 motor controllers (Jaguar Class) ok, but when we'd instantiate the fourth, the speed controllers would always act like there was no code running (the activity lights on them would just blink).

We used the debugger to verify the code was actually running and looping through our functions, which we confirmed it was. Then, we tried the same thing with victors and had no success with any number of Victors. We started to get suspicious.

We looked at our wiring and found that the digitial side car was UNPOWERED. The power from the Power Distribution board was unplugged. We plugged this in and all our code started working. I can only surmise that the digital I/O from the cRIO was enough to power the digital sidecar with up to three jaguars but four was too much. EL-OH-EL.

I hope this helps anyone else with similar problems.
Reply With Quote