weird clicking and buzzing on power distribution board

[mickey]

Im trying to deploy labview code to my cRIO but it almost always doesn't complete the deployment process. The power distribution board was clicking like an ossilating relay, but our electrical team found a bad jaguar controller and removed it. The clicking stopped and I could deploy some code, but about an hour later, the power distribution board started buzzing and I get the "waiting for real-time target to respond" message. The code should be good, and the ip communications is also correct. I think the problem is electrical, but I cannot isolate the cause.

[drwisley]

Try pulling each fuse until the clicking goes away. That should isolate the electrical problem.

[mickey]

Once the defective jaguar was removed, the clicking stopped. But even when I removed everything from the power dist. except the crio, the power dist. still buzzes. Is the buzzing normal?

[drwisley]

That's not normal, sorry I haven't come across that issue yet.

[Alan Anderson]

Clicking usually means that something is drawing enough current to trip a circuit breaker. The breakers are auto-resetting, so the clicks will repeat rapidly. (You mentioned a "bad" Jaguar? The typical cause of that would be connecting power to the motor output instead of the power input.)

Buzzing would be coming from one or more of the boost power supplies providing up-regulated 12 and 24 volts. If the battery voltage drops low enough, they can get noisy. I've also heard a squeal at a very high pitch when I used a 12-to-5 volt converter other than the one from the Kit of Parts.

[mickey]

So why can't I deploy code to the robot? Should I try a more charged battery? Or is this not an electrical problem?

[Mark McLeod]

Certainly, the first thing to use is a freshly charged battery.

[RoboTigers1796]

Its either the an amp breakers on the board that needs to be replaced, but our team encountered this problem also...in our situation the polarities on one of the victors was reversed.

[PAR_WIG1350]

When the cRIO's power consumption is low, the 24volt supply hums (could also be called a whine, or a buzz). It's on page 7 here.

[mickey]

Thanks for the help. Once I used a fully charged battery, the buzzing stopped. I also reformatted the cRIO. The code now does deploy to the robot correctly. I think the reformatting helped the most, but I'm glad to know that the buzzing is normal for weak batteries, rather than a sign of a defective part.