Hello!
We wired up the 2015 control system on an old drive base (just 4 cims and pneumatics for shifting)
Unfortunately, we’ve now fried 3 victors with this system, and we can’t figure out why.
Each time, a different Victor is fried, all 884s.
From what we can tell from the driver station logs, there is a massive spike of voltage as the Victor fries, 12 volts to ~ 6.5 (this is probably caused by the frying itself).
The driverstation will also get a message about 1 brownout, then continue as usual.
When the robot is disabled, the robot continues to spin in a circle,
we then shut off the breaker.
Any help would be appreciated as to why these victors are being fried.
Are the victors old?. Is it possible there is some metal debris that could be causing the short?
In alpha and beta testing, we he our robot running, at various times, with 884, 888, gray and black jags, talons, talon sr’s, and finally the new victors and talons, and didn’t have an issue with any of them.
In nearly 100% of these failures, the input and output wiring is flipped. The Victors and all other controllers are not protected for this kind of miswire. The Victor has hard to see markings on the case.
I had a team who once wired all their speed controllers correctly, but reversed the power leads into the power distribution panel
That doesn’t sound like your issue though, since they’d all go at once.
You have a short, either at the motor controller or the drivetrain motor itself (case short). I would highly suggest checking your wiring again.
We have used over 4 different RoboRio’s since 2013 (Alpha and Beta testing) and have not had a single issue with any of them frying motor controllers on a correctly wired system.
I have had no roboRIO experience yet, but, the cRIO control system outputs 5v through the red cable in the PWM by default(presumably for the use of speedcontrollers), but page 13 of the roboRIO manual says it outputs 6v there always.
However, if this was a real problem, it would have gotten caught in beta testing, and it wasn’t. It is probably not the issue. As to what is, I couldn’t tell you. Its definitely shorting with that kind of voltage drop.
The Digital Sidecar output 6V on the center pin when the servo jumper was installed. It was disconnected when the servo jumper was not installed. The roboRIO does output 6v all the time on the center pin. However, all FRC legal speed controllers have the center pin disconnected, so it doesn’t matter what the roboRIO outputs.
