Hello chief delphi world, Im a head mentor for team 1230 and we have been running into quite the jam these past few days, it seems that when the new chassis that we put together is driven, the robot will cease to function when the joystick in use is turned completely to the right.
We have tried a variety of troubleshooting techniques, we have:
disconnected motors from the drive train to see if its strain on the drive train causing a current spike, which didn’t work
disconnected one jaguar at a time (4 cim 6wd)
disconnected a entire side (removed pwms and disconnected jags from circuit)
disconnected all motors but one
disabled the watchdog
replaced the digital side car
replaced pwms / swictched sides (changed right for left)
changed out all the jags for victors
the only thing left is to change the power distribution board and the crio, but im trying to avoid that because the only other crio is on last years robot. any help would be greatly appreciated. also we are coding in java and are just calling a simple arcade drive to run the robot. the robot also runs fine foward, backward, and left, just not right (when all motors are given a negetive input i think)
when the robot ceases function it still says robot enabled on the driver station but does not accept any more commands. the only code error ive seen is 44002 on the driver station and this specific line in the java error window “default disabled consider providing your own”
Do you hear clicks from the PDB? Those would be the circuit breakers tripping, which indicates some kind of mechanical problem (binding gearbox, robot too long to turn, etc).
this problem happens when the robot is off and on the ground. i don’t recall hearing any popping noise but i will check for it tomorrow. i will probably take a video as well
What are the lights on the speed controllers doing? If it’s a solid orange/yellow light, they are reviving a data value of 0. If they’re flashing, they aren’t getting any data. I would also check the voltage of the power going to the digital sidecar while this happens. Have you eliminated it being a programming problem? That’s what really jumps out at me, although just because I keep breaking our robot through the computer doesn’t mean everyone does…
We had this problem! Power your digital sidecar, a powerconnector is required in the bottom next to the RSL pins and near the motor controller I/O pins.
We had this problem on our testing mechanum bot. We figured that we gave so much power to the wheels that when we wanted to change direction, It took up too much power and shut down. I don’t exactly know how we fixed it but we eventually did; I think we put everything on which fixed it
Define “cease to function”. Is the robot still powered on? Do you have comm? Is your main breaker tripped (that would take A LOT)? Is it no longer responding to signal? Is it pausing while it attempts to make turns?
Are all six of your wheels on the ground or 4?
There’s always the simple stuff: Have you checked your wiring + to + and - to -? Are the proper breakers in place on the PDB? Are your motors all spinning the correct direction?
Were your wheels mounted right? You could have had them on the wrong side and (speculating) were stalling the motors because the wheel force vectors were canceling out.
Xeno,
What you describe is a classic failure mode when a wire is shorted to chassis and the Crio is not isolated from the robot frame. When the motors are driven on the left side (to turn right), the resulting voltage differential either pulls the Crio power supply below operating level or disables the Crio power supply in the PD. While a video would be of help, please try describe the actual fault and how long it lasts. Does the robot stop functioning for 10 seconds, 20, 50, etc? Are you tethered or operating wireless? Do the controllers show disabled or full throttle? What does the battery voltage on your dashboard do during the failure?
That’s a clear indication that your Digital Sidecar is not receiving 12V power. Its power input needs to be fed from a 20A breaker on the Power Distribution Board.
