Driver station dead

[viper110110]

The other day, we made a power cord to power the driver station through the power distribution board, allowing us to mount the driver station on the bot (we're making a gokart ). We did a test and everything seemed to work, comms, battery voltage, enable/disable with the big blinking light. We turned around to program it and when we powered the bot/DS up again, it refused to boot up. It would get part way, then reset, and repeat. Most of the time it would fill up all white before restarting.

We have it plugged into the smaller section of the power distribution board with a 20 amp breaker. We have tested the other end of the cord and it is getting 12.5 V, which seems right.

[Mark McLeod]

We had our driver station powered through the Power Distribution Panel on a 20a breaker too, the way you've set yours up.

A pretty low 12v battery will keep it from booting.

Does your DS still work when powered using the transformer and house current?

Do you see the KwikByte logo come up?

[Alan Anderson]

If you find that the DS won't boot properly when connected to its wall wart power supply, about your only course of action would be to try to reprogram it. If it only fails when trying to use the robot battery for power, you might not have a good battery, or you might have a poor power connection.

The WGA (robot radio) power output from the Power Distribution board is perfectly suited to powering the Driver Station. It's up-regulated, so you won't have to worry about momentary low-voltage situations causing an extended loss of control while the DS reboots.

[viper110110]

There was an incident last year which involved the death of the wall power supply, so all through the build season we were hooking it up to a battery to use it.

I have tried the power supply from the router, which worked before, but it gives the same result. I usually get the kwikbyte logo and the little flashing cursor before it restarts. Today when I tested it, I managed to boot up fine, able to flick the enable/disable switch, but that only lasted a few seconds. a kill power/repower had it work for a split second, but it was downhill from there.

[Mark McLeod]

Sounds like the OS is corrupted.

You can try reflashing the operating system.
Some team nearby might have the adaptor necessary.

Directions are at: http://www.kwikbyte.com/driverstatio...ity_loader.pdf

It needs a modified serial connector: https://www.kwikbyte.com/store/produ...cat=256&page=1
or you can make one yourself aka Joe Ross
http://forums.usfirst.org/showpost.p...92&postcount=6