Motor controller flickering

[Wildcats1378]

Hello everyone,

We've been having a mostly minor issue with one of our robot functions. Our shooter is a catapult, but instead of having it always tensioned, we tightena loosen the tension via a window motor.

Our problem is that sometimes, when pulling the tension back, or motor will flicker, or skip. I thought it could be a mechanical problem with or mechanism not being perfectly square, but when I traced it back to the motor controller, it appeared the light was flickering between yellow and green very fast.

We changed the battery, thinking it was a voltage problem, but it was still intermittently there. We thought it could be a coding problem, but releasing the tension back works fine, and it sometimes pulls the tension fine too. I'm basically all out of ideas.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

[eddie12390]

Are you running the Window Motor using a Jaguar and if so have you removed the internal pin?

[Wildcats1378]

No Jaguar, only Victor or Talon so far.

[JoshuaGabriel]

have you double checked that the power distribution board is connected to the correct talon terminals? I had a talon behave similar when it was wired-up incorrectly.

The PD board should be connected to the RED "+" side of the talon. The motor to the WHITE "M+" side of the talon.

-Josh

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Wild,
You have to tell us which device you were viewing when you saw the indication above. Victor or Talon may give a different indication. It sounds like your PWM cable is not fully inserted or is intermittent.

[Joe Ross]

One possibility is that you have a programming bug and are sending the motor both a neutral and a forward signal in the same loop.

[Wildcats1378]

It is a victor and the issue is not a PWM cable but we'll try and switch it out anyway

[cglrcng]

We had the issue also before calibration, then we simply calibrated all of our Talons and the lights stopped flickering immediately. Look near the light on each speed controller, there is a small little button (use a small screwdriver to press & hold the button and calibrate them to the controller joystick as required ...full forward / then full reverse / then zeroed ), as listed in the speed controller documentation. See then if those lights then stop flickering.

Hope this helps.

[Wildcats1378]

We went back and looked at our programming, and ended up reducing the wait timer on one of the loops. It mostly fixed thee issue right up!