Loose Cables

[FRC Team CC]

Hey guys,

We have been having a problem recently with the driver station. When we are practicing, our joysticks randomly disconnect and do not work. To fix the problem, we have to disconnect the wire from the phone, plug it back in, and reconfigure the joysticks. This is wastes about 5-10 seconds each time it happens and cannot be an issue during the tournament.

Have any of you guys experienced such an issue? If so, do you know if the problem is a loose connection or the quality of the wire itself? If the problem is the wire, what wire do you recommend to avoid such disconnects?

Below is a picture of our phone setup and wire.

Thanks,
Charging Champions
Team 8660

[ehochstein]

Below is the connection that has the highest potential of causing problems. However, if you take a look at your connections, you'll notice that the OTG Cable and the USB cable are slightly offset - is that connection loose by chance?

[FRC Team CC]

The wire is plugged in properly, but it just seems to randomly disconnect even when we don't touch it.

Do you recommend a different OTG cable?

[pilum40]

could you anchor the USB cable at the end to the chassis and make a phone case that fits the mini fitting snugly with a through the case fitting? Just fishing as my Seniors were working through a 3D printing design and print exercise this week in Design/Presentation class.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Please note that the control system requires a ferrite choke be installed on the USB cable. While none is shown in these photos, I suspect the other end of the cable has the required choke(core).
Please note that these USB connectors on the phone are surface mount devices and cannot tolerate a lot of misalignment or constant flexing. My recommendation (following FTC recommendations) is to tie down the USB connector to the same structure as the phone is mounted against. This prevents the phone moving independently of the cable. If that is not possible, I recommend a wire tie point be attached to the phone and to use that to secure the cable. Several types are found everywhere with self stick application. Just look for "wire management" when looking for these. I seem to remember that I saw these in the electrical area of Home Depot. McMaster has several in stock as does Digikey.

[FRC Team CC]

NOTE: the picture above is on the driver station end and not the robot controller.

We will try adding ferrite chokes and see if that makes a difference.

[Quinton.B.2449]

This happens to our team many times, we ended up just unplugging the joysticks from the driver station and restarting the driver station and plunging in the joysticks after it starts. Or we reinstall the driver station.

[FRC Team CC]

Looks like the issue was with the USB splitter. This morning, at the beginning of our qualifier, we figured out that the wire leaving the USB splitter to the phone was loose and could be slid around. After asking another team for a replacement splitter, we did not have any problems with joystick disconnects.