Help with Neo/Spark Max

Technical
1

We are having fast flashing orange/yellow when we plug into 2 of our spark max. When those are disconnected, the system works normal. This happened intermittently after getting hit. We changed the entire can loop and found a broken wire at one point. Every time we plug the van into the spark max, the system faults. Any ideas?

2

One note, we did also change out the spark max and have the same exact issue

3

Assuming you also have a Neo plugged into the spark, this thread suggests that the Neo might be internally broken, and will short any sparkmax plugged into it. I would try plugging in a totally new spark that has not been plugged into those potentially faulty Neos by itself.

4

That issue kills the sparkmax completely, so that it won’t turn on. I doubt it’s happening here.

OP:

Here are the SparkMAX status codes. Status LED Patterns - SPARK MAX

Orange and yellow blink is a CAN fault. I would check you CAN wiring, replacing any wires that connect those two SparkMAX’s to the rest of the loop.

If the lights are flashing rapidly, I would suspect a problem with the encoder cable. When that happened to us, we saw that one of the encoder wires had come out of its crimp.

5

To be clear with my particular issue, after the NEO is plugged in, there are no status codes or lights, the Spark MAX does not respond to USB, and no way to get to a diagnostic or DFU mode to flash firmware. The Spark is completely dead. And yes, this occurred with brand new out of the box Spark MAX, after they were first verified working via plugging into USB, setting CAN ID and current limits, then plugging into this particular NEO.

6

All of these are problems we’ve had in the past. Here’s some suggestions for troubleshooting:

  • Make sure that your CAN bus is correctly connected across the rest of the system. Sometimes it can be an issue with Green connecting to Yellow or a termination issue. Make sure CAN doesn’t ground out somewhere.
  • Check the NEO encoder wires. They are really fragile and result in that blink code when they break, as stated earlier. Check the entire length of the wire as well as the cripms/housing.
  • Make sure that the power wires are connected correctly (Red to Red, ect.).
  • Replace the NEO with one that you know works.
  • Do the same with the sparkMAX.
  • Power cycle the robot, even if you’ve done this already.
7

You forgot an apostrophe :rofl:

8

Fixed! Thanks for letting me know.