Quote:
Originally Posted by IndySam
Every sidecar problem we ever had was caused buy the cable and not the sidecar.
Check the cable.
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Well we tried switching cables earlier but didn't get much progress in that respect. We're not using the ribbon cable; we're using DB37s
Quote:
Originally Posted by apples000
We've had this problem quite a bit. For us it's been caused by a digital I/O or PWM connector being shorted out. You should try running the robot with nothing connected to the sidecar, then add the connections until you find the bad one. We've found that it's quite easy for the DIO cables to get damaged and short together and cause the 5V supply on the sidecar to drop out. We've also seen a very similar problem to this where all of the outputs on the sidecar drop out. This is caused by the 9403 digital module losing power. If your cRIO power connector is loose, it can cause the digital module(the part that goes in the cRIO, not the sidecar) to brown out when the rest of the cRIO doesn't.
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I'll check out the module and cRio power tomorrow but previously we've switched the module for another one and also didn't get much progress either. We've had that problem before, and it solved by switching. I'd rather not think of the odds of both busses being bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
A few thoughts that might help diagnose the issue:
- unplug the DSC and hold a multimeter up to the plug. Read the voltage when the robot is both enabled and disabled. Please make sure you do so safely! This should mimic the battery voltage, so it won't hold steady at 12V.
- Even if you don't have a short, you could have an open circuit. I saw a team at an off season competition a month or two ago that used 22 gauge from the PDB to the DSC, and managed to burn it out completely - broken wire, burned/melted insulation... it was ugly. With a broken wire, you could see intermittent operation.
- Remove all the breakers from the PDB except those required for the DSC and the analog breakout board. Do you still hear that whine? Do you still see the incorrect behavior on the DSC? If not go through replacing the breakers one at a time - at some point you'll start encountering your issues again, but this may give you a different place to look.
- Are there any red LED's on beneath any of ports on the DSC? Those are there to tell you if there is an issue (a short) with that port!
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I'll have to try all of these tomorrow as well. We hooked up with 18GA on 20amp so I'd be surprised if we burned that. I don't believe there were any red LED's showing yet.