So tonight we swapped out another encoder. Just to try it. Same problem. If not worst. I forgot my O-Scope today. I walked right out of the office and it's sitting by office door...oh well...I will remember to grab it tomorrow so we can see what's up the encoders.
So we tried plan "B" which was we installed brand new MA3 Analog Encoders from Andy Mark:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2899.htm
Wired them to an Analog Breakout board instead of the Encoder Breakout Board of course...Seemed to get a reading back. The Analog In and Sensor values is like 8.3 to the E6 power. It's some large numbers we are seeing.
I assume it's normal that we can not RESET the ZERO when using "Analog Encoder"? because we were not able to reset our zero. I assume because these are used as absolute positioning. <---NEVER MIND, I downloaded the new manual from the website...section 21.17 addresses this issue... 21.17. Firmware 1.4: When setting the “Sensor Position” of an analog encoder, multiple set commands are required.
But I think what was the fork in the process of using the MA3s, was when we noticed that the SLAVE Talon SRX was not following the MASTER Talon SRX any longer. We noticed that the master's led's was RED while the SLAVE led's would be GREEN. The amperage on the master would spike up to 40-55 amps. Like the slave motor was fighting the master motor. It would not do this all the time, only spikes or momentary.
We NEVER had that problem when the input sensor was configured for Digital Encoder verses Analog Encoder. I am not sure what was causing the master and slave to fight like that. All we did was change the sensor type.
Tomorrow we will go back to the encoders and we will Oscope the encoders we have and check and make sure they work. If we have time, we can feed them into the RobotRio like Mr. Anderson suggests. I do have a 128 cycle count to try verses the 1000 cycle count to see if that helps the Talon's SRX polling.