Digital Side Car issues

[iilego]

For some reason our digital side car can't operate any motor that is put into PWM5-PWM10. 1-4 work fine and we know it's not the motors cause we plug all of them into 1-4 so I was hoping if anyone could tell me why?

[Jon Stratis]

Have you checked the cable from the cRio to the DSC? This sort of issue is fairly common with an improperly assembled ribbon cable. Try replacing it with one of the big grey cables that were in the KoP a few years ago, and see if that clears up the issue. If so, you know the problem was in the cable!

[iilego]

are there any other possibilities, I'm not at the shop at the moment but I was just curious to see if there could be any other problems that could cause this, just so that I could go through the list tomorrow and save time.

[Jon Stratis]

Possible problems in order of likelihood:
1. Incorrectly assembled/damaged cable
2. Poorly written code (This is always high on the list... it would be number 1, except you got ports 1-4 working, so it seems like you should know what you're doing for the other ports)
3. Damage to the DSC (metal shavings, burned out components)
4. Damage to the Digital I/O module on the cRio (a bent/broken pin, burned out through misuse)
5. Damage to the cRio (a bent/broken pin, metal shavings, burned out components)

Start by replacing the cable. If that doesn't work, replace the side car. If that still doesn't work, pray that someone has a space cRio you can try out.

[iilego]

could you tell me a little more about number 2 actually because I'm not too sure about the code. In the code there is that blue PWM box, is that how you declare a slot on the DSC or do you have to do something else because everyone is telling me that it's the code that's not working. So how do you create a spot for the DSC in labview?

[Jon Stratis]

That sounds like a great question for the Labview forum... unfortunately, I don't know much about programming Labview...

[iilego]

alright, thanks for the suggestions.

[C_Elegans]

Our digital sidecar was behaving sort of like that. All ports except 2 and 3 were not working. The digital sidecar had metal shavings inside from us drilling into our robot above it. Try opening it up and cleaning it.