Legality of running a capacitor inline with roboRIO power

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

As cmwilson13 notes, this is your problem.

It could be mechanical, but I suspect one of your CIMs is turning against the other. Unplug all breakers except one, run the drivetrain and note the direction. Repeat for all other CIMs. Let us know what you find.

As for mechanical: If you cannot easily turn the wheels by hand (robot off), disconnect things until you can. Whatever you just disconnected has a mechanical problem, for example a gear in backwards and rubbing the housing. Happens all the time.

Please do exactly what is stated above. Do not take any shortcuts.

Remove all your breakers from your drivetrain.

Put one in, check that the motor for that breaker is both:
a) running - a dead motor work will against you, and can cause potential brownouts
b) is running in the CORRECT DIRECTION - this is very likely the problem as you are browning out even when you are up on blocks. My best bet is that you have a gearbox with multiple motors going into to, and one of them is running in the wrong direction.

Remove that breaker, and install it on the next drivetrain motor. Do not install more than 1 breaker at a time when doing this check.

There are a lot of posts in this thread with a lot of "noise" but please ensure you do this 100% before moving on.

[philso]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

Please do exactly what is stated above. Do not take any shortcuts.

Remove all your breakers from your drivetrain.

Put one in, check that the motor for that breaker is both:
a) running - a dead motor work will against you, and can cause potential brownouts
b) is running in the CORRECT DIRECTION - this is very likely the problem as you are browning out even when you are up on blocks. My best bet is that you have a gearbox with multiple motors going into to, and one of them is running in the wrong direction.

Remove that breaker, and install it on the next drivetrain motor. Do not install more than 1 breaker at a time when doing this check.

There are a lot of posts in this thread with a lot of "noise" but please ensure you do this 100% before moving on.

These are the most concise instructions that will likely locate the source of your problem.

The one other thing I would suggest would be to do a "pull test" on every wire connection to make sure every crimp is done correctly. I know you have stated "I can say with 100% certainty that our wiring is not the problem. The wiring is pristine, and correct." but you have not indicated how you have verified that your opinion is correct. I cannot count how many times I have been asked to look at "pristine" and "correct" looking crimps that, later, failed the pull test.

[Ether]

The OP has not specified under what conditions the motors brown out when up on blocks.

I did not see any mention of how many motors are in his drivetrain or what drivetrain motor controllers are being used.

With e.g. 6 motors being commanded by controllers without voltage ramping, and given the high-motor-speed 4.75ft/s gearing, is it not possible to have up-on-blocks motor brownouts for step throttle changes from full forward to full reverse... even if all the wiring is correct?