Potentiometer wiring

[Matthew Blake]

Hey fellow CD'ers.

Today I tried wiring the VEX potentiometer and made the male end of the PWM cable into a female for it to fit on the Digital I/O on the sidecar. We fired the robot up to see if we got any response/signal in the driver station. Suddenly we started smelling burned Pot; I figured we probably connected the potentiometer wrong. We have gotten input from veteran teams that it goes into the sidecar. Any suggestions why this happened and how we are supposed to wire the Pot?

[kamocat]

Yep.
If you look on the Jaguar "analog" connector, it's labeled "+ S -", in that order.
That means that signal should go in the middle.
This is different from the Analog Breakout on the cRIO, where Signal is on the side.

The good news is, this makes it very easy to reverse the direction of the pot. All you have to do is flip the connector at the Jag.

[Mark McLeod]

Potentiometers are analog devices.
They get wired into the Analog Breakout on the cRIO, NOT the Digital Sidecar.

[Jonzki]

Thanks for the answers.
We now know that the potentiometer doesn't go into the sidecar.
Still, the wiring is probably wrong. Since I read that the Pots have the (+ S -) outputs and the input on the analog input is (- + S). We wired the cables red to red, black to black and white to white. I now understand this is wrong. So i've have to basicly rewire (probably use a new pot because i believe its fried) and figure out the output on the wires from the pot and ignore colors while connecting them to a PWM cable to go into analog breakout on the cRIO.

[kamocat]

If you're using CAN, and this pot is for feedback for the Jaguar, it should be wired to the Jaguar.

Since this is the CAN forum, I assumed that was the case.