Testing Relays

[ForeverNight]

So, we broke 3 of our 5 relays last year and, like idiots, forgot to label or throw away the broken ones. Now, as head of electrics I've inherited this problem from last year's team, so my question to you all is, how do you test these things?

The only ideas I've had to test them so far are: A) Hooking them up to a pair of power sources (1 to plug in on the input side, 1 to hook up to the pwm cables to simulate data) and then taking a multi-meter to record voltage. or B) Pluging it in to our current test bed w/ cRIO and digital side car and then testing for continuity.

So, is there any good way for this to be tested? Nobody has any ideas on my team and those are the ideas I've posted. So, basically, help?

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by ForeverNight

B) Pluging it in to our current test bed w/ cRIO and digital side car and then testing for continuity.

If you have a test bed already set up with a cRIO and Digital Sidecar can't you wire the Spikes up to a motor one at a time and test them? The Spikes use spade terminals so you do the wiring once and then just switch the Spikes in and out.

Also, were the Spikes themselves fried or did you just blow the fuses?

[Alan Anderson]

Use a simple program on the cRIO to control a relay output. Wire that relay output to the suspect Spike along with power. Either put lights or motors on the Spike outputs, or just measure the output voltage with a DVM.

[ForeverNight]

Alright, I was thinking that that was the best option available, but the testbed is being dominated by our programmers. So I was wondering if there was another way. Ah well, thanks.

Yes, we fried the spikes. I don't know how we did it, but we did. I did some work with them last year and replaced the fuses, but still didn't work. Thanks, I'll get going on testing them.

[engunneer]

I believe you can hook it up to a standard R/C receiver, and use a standard R/C transmitter to make them go.

The easiest ways to blow up a spike are to reverse the input power, or to hook the battery to the outputs.

Unfortunately, the spade design makes it easy to do either of those.