Victors behaving erratically when PWM is plugged in

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Sylphrena

UPDATE: We replaced the y-cables with straight cables, and the problems disappeared. Now we're rapidly running out of space on the sidecar for more victors, but that's neither here nor there.

As Joe says, it's likely that you just masked a power problem by opening more PWM channels. If you tell your robot to spin to the left (or right, depending on wiring), do the motors quit unexpectedly?

Seriously, look at the three power LEDs on the Digital Sidecar and make sure they're all on even with the connection to the cRIO removed. Verify that the power input of the Digital Sidecar is getting battery voltage (~12V) from a red/black pair of Wago connections on the Power Distribution Board, protected by a 20A snap action breaker.