Program crashes when enabled

[Tim Reddersen]

We are having a problem adding a spike to our program. When we click enable on the drivers station and the spike is "ON" the program crashes. We are running Mecanum drive and that works well by itself. It doesn't appear to be a wiring problem.

When we start our robot the 6V and 5V lights are on on the sidecar along with the flashing light where the running light plugs in. When we press "Activate" the 5V and flashing light turn out. If we deactivate they turn back on.

We tried disconnecting all cables from the sidecar except the power and the 25 pin cable and it still crashes.

We have replaced just about everything from our PWM cables to the Crio itself so it doesn't seem to be a hardware issue(sidecar, spike, module, 25 pin cable, PWM cables, Crio)

I ran the "Relay Example.vi" example code included with LabVIEW and it still crashed.

I did install the latest updates for LabVIEW and for the Drivers Station.

I'm the only programmer for our team and I'm at my wits end. If anyone could help it would be appreciated.

[Joe Ross]

If you remove all cables from the digital sidecar (including the 37 pin cable) except for power, do the 3 power LEDs remain lit?

Does it matter what relay channel you use?

[Tim Reddersen]

If we remove all cables the lights still go out when "Activated". The 37 pin cable powers the 5V because we had removed the power cable and the 5V light was still on. We have not tried a test with out the 37 pin cable attached.

We did try to use a different relay port with no luck.

[Tom Line]

In my experience, losing the 5V light on the digital sidecar usually means you've got a bad sidecar, or you're shorting out (or both). Since you've removed all the PWM's already, do you have a spare sidecar you can try?

[Joe Ross]

I'm suspecting that you aren't actually powering the digital sidecar through the power connector, only through the 37 pin connector, which doesn't provide enough power to reliably run things. When you add an additional load, by turning on the relay, everything crashes.

The wago connector may be clamping on the insulation, or you may have a loose wire, or missing circuit breaker, or something like that.

[Tim Reddersen]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

In my experience, losing the 5V light on the digital sidecar usually means you've got a bad sidecar, or you're shorting out (or both). Since you've removed all the PWM's already, do you have a spare sidecar you can try?

We do have an extra sidecar and did try to swap them out. Didn't help

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I'm suspecting that you aren't actually powering the digital sidecar through the power connector, only through the 37 pin connector, which doesn't provide enough power to reliably run things. When you add an additional load, by turning on the relay, everything crashes.

The wago connector may be clamping on the insulation, or you may have a loose wire, or missing circuit breaker, or something like that.

When we get back together tomorrow I will check the connection.

Thanks for the help

[Tim Reddersen]

When I checked the connection I found that the insulation was fine. However, I also discovered that it was wired to a 5V connection. When we rewired it to a regular connection it worked great.

Thank-you, your help pointed me in the right direction. I feel much better about putting it in the crate tomarrow.