Victor light blinking quickly

[meatmanek]

At BMR we had an interesting electrical problem during one of the practice matches. One side of the drivetrain was getting very low power, in a sporadic fashion. (every once in a while, maybe 2 or 3 times per second it would get a small burst of low power)

Our drivetrain has 2 2.5" CIMs per side, each driven by their own Victor. Each side is controlled by a PWM Y-cable, so both of the victors were getting the exact same input.

When we took it back to the pits to investigate, we noticed these things:

1. When the motors were unplugged, the PWM lights worked as expected.
2. When we plugged the motors back in, one Victor's light would work as expected, but the other would blink quickly, roughly 2 Hz. This is faster than it blinks when it gets no signal. It would only blink when you tried to drive it - 127 would still yield an orange light.
3. We had arranged our quick disconnects improperly:

Victor side:
R1 R2
B1 B2

Motor side:
R1 R2
B2 B1

The improper wiring allowed both motors to work properly so long as both Victors worked properly. If both victors work, R1 and R2 will always be at the same voltage, and B1 and B2 will always be at the same voltage.

We rearranged the quick disconnects to correct it, and we haven't seen the fast blinking again. (Problem solved, so far as I'm concerned - we can replace the victor if necessary later on.)

However, I'm curious. What happened that made the Victor light blink quickly?
The quick blinking is not documented in the Victor 884 user's manual.

[Eldarion]

I believe this happens when the Victor senses that it cannot turn on properly in that particular direction. We had the same blinking light at Midwest, this was right after we smelled magic smoke and the Victor would not drive the motor in the direction that the light was blinking. The Victor worked fine in the other direction, though.