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Unread 17-03-2006, 01:15
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Rombus Rombus is offline
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AKA: Rick Kosbab
FRC #4188 (Columbus Space Program)
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Opelika, AL
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So what happend with our camera?

So as an electrical guy, I'm trying to pin down some issue with our camera after the end of our season. I cant seem to figure out what was going on, and the programming team wasn't to sure either. So hopefully someone can give me a nugget of info about what happened.

The setup:
Camera at the top of our turret.
Wiring run was 5 feet, About a foot from the end there is a DB25 connector where the 2 servo runs, 1 TTL run, and 2 limit switches run though for quick disconnect.
2 runs of cable: 1 was TTL and both servos, the second was power. Each run was heatshrinked with clear heatshirnk ran though the alum frame of our turret.
All wires had continuity and were solid runs with unmeasurable resistance.

The problems:
1. Intermittent connection, sometimes the camera would work, sometimes it wouldn't. Wiring seemed fine, TTL chip was hot glued to RC, and the Power and data cables were hot glued into the case our camera was at and worked fine for a few matches then mysteriously stopped working. I couldn't track down the issue, but the programming team swore their code was fine, and when it did work, it worked fine.
2. During disable, the camera would want to go to 0, 0 rather than 127,127, it would jitter there, however during normal operation, camera would recenter to 127,127 fine.
3. during programming, the camera would jitter like above.
4. This happened on both a 2006 RC and a 2004 RC, on the 2006 RC, it seemed that when the camera worked and tracked, it would not jitter, but when it was not going to work, it would jitter. on the 2004 RC the jitter seemed almost random.

So what do you guys think? Is it a wiring issue? Code? or something else? Ill try to provide whatever answers and data i can if asked. Thanks for your help!
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