If you don’t have access to a place where you can hang the robot, you can try to pull the climbers from the retracted position to see if there is a greater resistance than previous.
Can you please also elaborate on the setup that you are using? (number of climbs, gear ratio, diameter of the rope winch/spool) The issue may also be mechanical as a NEO smoking is in no way normal. There was a recent thread on this topic and the response from @Domtech was beneficial.