[RbtGal1351]

Originally Posted by RyanN

Our robot, Lamont-A-Bot had a transistor on its left drive Victor explode, causing our robot to go out of control. Unplugging the controller or swithing the diable switch on did nothing, and the fuse didn't blow, since there was no short circuit. So we had a 120 lb robot moving toward a bunch of our summer campers at our robotics camp, and I saved the day by picking up one side with one arm, and switching it off with the other, hence my little quote at the bottom. I don't know what would cause the victor to go bad following just switching the robot on. Last year we had a victor do the same thing, but it didn't cause it to go out of control, however, it would not go in reverse. In the end, it was pretty funny. Has anybody else had trouble with this before?

Yeah, kind of similar.
In 2005 (at 11:00pm before ship) we wired a Victor backwards (switched red and black on the input, I think) and as soon as the robot was turned on, the motor went shooting forwards. It did let out the magic smoke, but I think that's because the motor was on our arm with a hefty mechanical hard stop.