Operator Interface Troubleshooting

[DavidGitz]

Ok so we are having some problems with our 2007 'bot. We had removed our scoring mechanism to leave us just with our drive-train and electronics board. When trying to power up and drive the 'bot, we don't get any control for any input. We downloaded the default camera bells and whistles, and for the life of me I can't get any thing to respond to a control. I inserted pwm1=p1_y; into the user_routines.c in the normal place and hooked it up to one of our cam servo's, and it won't do anything. We are able to download the hex file successfully and get all 5 green lights on the OI. We don't have our TTL chip anymore (need to buy one again from IFI) or the 7.2 V battery but as far as I know we should still be able to do something, like control a motor. I believe that driving a servo without the 7.2 V battery won't work, but we tried a lot of other configurations in the code, like made pwm13=p1_x; to make the left drive motor respond only to the x-axis and it won't do anything. We get all flashing orange lights on the victor's but the cables seem to be in all the way, we had to cut the plastic connector down to the right sizing before and they worked before fine, we are just having problems with the same setup now. Anybody have any ideas? Very annoying problem.

[Mr. Freeman]

Try tethering the OI to the RC. We had a similar problem when trying to test 2 robots at the same time using 2 years' of hardware. When you tether the OI to the RC, the RC stores the OI's info so it knows which OI to look for when it powers up. If you change the settings on your OI (team number, channel), you have to re-tether the bot to 'link' the two back together.

Now, you say that you have green lights across the board and I think one of those is "radio link". Green would mean it's linked properly, so this might not be your problem.

The only other thing I can think of is that you blew out all of your victors. If either the supply power or the PWM cable is connected backwards ONCE and powered up, it WILL destroy the unit. (It took us 2 years of mysterious failures before we read the victor 884 manual and discovered this fact. We now have 5-8 dead victors in our supply closet)
We haven't managed to blow them all out at once. However if someone has recently rewired the robot they may have inserted all the PWM cables backwards. Perhaps someone reversed +12 and ground at one of the distribution terminals (I think that's what they're called, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't do very much of the wiring)?

[DavidGitz]

That's a good thought, but I know at least one Victor is functioning correctly because the motor does turn, but I assumed it was just turning because it wasn't calibrated correctly (or the trim is off). It does not vary with time or any change in the controls. And again, the joystick was also hooked up to a servo which won't move. Also, I neglected to mention that I also coded it to turn one of the relay led's to green when the trigger switched was clicked, and nothing happened.

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

That's a good thought, but I know at least one Victor is functioning correctly because the motor does turn, but I assumed it was just turning because it wasn't calibrated correctly (or the trim is off).

What light is this victor showing, and how fast is the motor turning?

I can confirm that a servo won't work at all if the backup battery isn't present, like you said in your original post.

Can you post your user_routines.c where you've made the relay LED turn green with the trigger switch? If there's nothing wrong with your code, then there's got to be a problem with the communications between the RC and the OI.

[whytheheckme]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

We get all flashing orange lights on the victor's

This sent off flashing bulbs in my head immediatley.

Flashing orange lights on Victors means that the Victor isn't getting (a proper) signal from the computer. This means that either the cable isn't seated properly, or that PWM variable isnt being written to in the program ever (maybe?).

I'm not too sure how removing the camera would affect the drive of the bot, but downloading default code typically won't work right off the bat. Try hooking up the OI to dashboard, and see if your values from your sticks are right. Then write a simple program for the FRC that takes the stick values and outputs them to PWM. Hook up the speed controllers to those PWM and see if the lights are no longer blinking orange (also, monitor the dashboard PWM output).

Hope this helps.

BTW, are you the person who wrote the original code? If not, can you get into contact with them at all?

Jacob

[DavidGitz]

One of the students had written the code, but it's pretty cut and dry. And also, I used the dashboard before for troubleshooting, it would read the oi values correctly but when you switch to the rc mode all the values were neutral. I really don't think it's a programming issue or a pwm wire issue, since they had worked before just fine. the victor's were solid orange, indicating a neutral (127) signal received from the rc board. Going to have to do more troubleshooting later.

[DavidGitz]

Fixed it. //Default_Routine();...Doh!

[xIrishxRedx]

We are trying to use our '07 robot and the Robot Controller continually reads standby, the transmitter reads transmitting and board says No Data/Radio. We have even tried changing out the Robot Controller to the old OI and see if that works but it doesn't. We are at a loss, any help?

Captain Team 1959