Recalibrating Victor 884

[Greg]

Hello everyone

We are having a very strange problem with the Victor 884. When we try to reset it to default calibration, or calibrate it as described in the manual, all we get is a blinking red light. The manual says this means calibration was not accepted. Is it possible somehow to calibrate this controller, or reset it to default calibration, or is it dead?

[Josh Hambright]

are u sure your doing it right?

Is the joystick connected corectly?


In our experience its pretty hard to screw up calibration.

I dont know exactly whats wrong though...
can you give any more information?

[Kit Gerhart]

We had a bad joystick which had bad potentiometer which had near-zero resistance with the stick in the neutral position. With this condition, the Victor did not calibrate properly. I'd suggest first trying a different joystick.

I suspect you are calibrating properly, but just in case, here is how you do it. Press the cal button until the light on the Victor alternately flashes red and green. Then move the stick full throw in both directions and return the stick to center. Then release the cal button. This should be done with the trim near center. The light should flash green a few times and then go to yellow.

[Greg]

The next day it worked fine... The Victor seems to have a mind of its own

[Lloyd Burns]

We had a problem with Victor 884's we had not seen before, in the wee hours of today: they would accept calibration, then refuse to admitthey'dever heard from the RC.

It seems that the PWM pins were not, for whatever reason, making contact with the connector hidden at the bottom of the hole in that pesky shroud. The victors would work, then not work; they'd blink out the on-on-off, over and over.

[Josh Hambright]

we had the absolute strangest problem last night...

We had our drive all connected up as it had been then we calibrated our drive PWM's...
when we tried to fire it up again we had the debugger running on the programming side. From that point on our joysticks were all screwed up and their max and min range was choped in half. When we replaced them with new joysticks everything was fine....
We are still confused on just why....

Is there something obvious i am missing due to lack of sleep, can anyone help?

[Joe Ross]

I've said it before, and I know Joe Johnson has said it before, but the victors come precalibrated for the FIRST control system. I've had more trouble trying to recalibrate them, then leaving them set at default.

Especially if you are using an autonomous program that sets them at 254 and 0, you don't want to calibrate them with your joystick that has a max and min of 230 and 10.

My advice, put them to default calibration and see if that fixes your problem. If that doesn't, then there is very likely something else wrong, and it is not the calibration.

[Josh Hambright]

thanks.

I'll try that right now!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

This is a very common problem but the Victor 884 sets calibration when you release the cal button. You hold it in while you go through maximum travel on the joystick then let go of the joystick to return to center, then let go of the cal button. It is on the release that all of the values you have input get stored. We have gone through all of the controllers on our proto type and shipping robot in the last week without problems.