Victors not working..

[Yalib]

hi,
we connected everything to our robot... PD board, cRio, motors sidecar and all the others...
when trying to drive it the LEDs of the 2 victors of the relavant motors just turn off and not green/red like they should...

enyone seen something like this and can help us?

thanks! Team 2630

[Garrett.d.w]

We had this problem a lot preseason. We found that 99% of the time it is related to metal chip floating around in the electronics.
I would recommend that you take a shop vac the robot every time you turn on the robot. It will keep the electronics a lot happier

[slijin]

Originally Posted by Yalib

we connected everything to our robot... PD board, cRio, motors sidecar and all the others...

Am I to take this to mean you have followed FIRST's wiring diagrams and guides to the letter?

Originally Posted by Yalib

when trying to drive it the LEDs of the 2 victors of the relavant motors just turn off and not green/red like they should...

When you enable the robot, do the LEDs turn solid yellow (or orange)? Does driving forwards or backwards turn the LEDs off?

I would recommend verifying that your Victors have been properly calibrated and reset them to the factory defaults as per the directions here. You may also want to check your joystick output to see if it sends the appropriate signals.

[Yalib]

will give it a try.. any other tips?

[Yalib]

when enabled the leds are solid orange and when driven they turn off...

[slijin]

Originally Posted by Yalib

when enabled the leds are solid orange and when driven they turn off...

I assume they turn off whether you drive forwards or backwards?

This almost definitely sounds like an issue with signal incompatibility. As I recommended in my earlier post, check the calibration of your Victors and the output of your joysticks.

You may also want to calibrate your Victors to your joysticks, but keep in mind that this will be something you must constantly double-check when you encounter driving issues, especially when swapping out busted electronics.

[Alan Anderson]

The LED on a Victor is yellow when neutral and will only go green or red as it gets near full voltage. For anything between neutral and full output, the LED will be off. This is normal operation.

Do you have the Victor fans wired to the power input? If so, you can watch whether the fans stop to see whether or not the Victor is still receiving power. A too-high load from the motors could be tripping the circuit breaker.

[slijin]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The LED on a Victor is yellow when neutral and will only go green or red as it gets near full voltage. For anything between neutral and full output, the LED will be off. This is normal operation.

Actually, on a test bed that we've set up (custom designed digital output, controlled w/ a pot), I find that the Victor's LED actually cuts out when the frequency of the signal is adjusted ever so slightly, although I've never scoped the circuit's output (it was mentor designed, sadly, when I had no idea how half the stuff I used worked), so I can't provide any numbers.