Spikes not working - URGENT

[efoote868]

For future reference, seating PWM cables into a spike are a real PITA. Back when I was still wrestling with the IFI system in the pits, we had just one spike that refused to work properly. It would operate our pneumatics, but only in one direction. After wrestling with it for half an hour (compounded by the fact our electronics were mounted vertically underneath our robot's arm).

Turns out just one of the pins was not seated properly. Talk about 30 minutes of debug wasted [an important lesson learned].

Something you can do to make sure the PWM cable is seated properly is to remove the top portion of the spike case (I don't remember any warranty stickers attached here). If you tug on it a little, the top will come off. Then you can actually see the terminal, and if you thread the PWM cable through the top of the case and see it plugged in, you won't have to worry about it being seated properly. Then you can push the top of the case back on, strain relief the cable and forget about it.