Sidecar/Jaguar Communications Issue

[Kevin Selavko]

They are supposed to blink yellowish orange when they are not sending power, red when in reverse, and green when going forward.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Kevin Selavko

They are supposed to blink yellowish orange when they are not sending power, red when in reverse, and green when going forward.

That is not precisely true. When the robot is disabled and they are receiving no signal, they will blink. When they are receiving a signal, they are solid. When full forward is commanded, green, and full reverse, red. To put it another way, when the robot is enabled, the jags do NOT blink.

A blinking jag means no command signal - i.e. a poor pwm cable, a bad pwm connection, a malfunctioning digital sidecar, a bad ribbon cable, or bad code.

[Kevin Selavko]

Ohh ok, well today we were having problems because someone over tightened a zip tie and it cut a pwm cable, so check all of them.

[burde1jb]

Could not be more grateful. It was indeed the DB37 cable being backwards. Another local team let me borrow their DB37 cable from last (not the ribbon) and everything worked great.

I reversed the ribbon, but when tightening with the vice, I went too far and bent the metal. When testing, the CIMs began turning with no input in a spastic fashion (jolt forward, jolt back, sporadic behavior).

So I ordered the exact cable model from last year's competition as well as replacements for the male end connector for the ribbon I wrecked.

This ribbon reversal was also a problem with two local teams. Do they pull this stuff on purpose? If so, can we make a rule that it not go against Rookie teams?