Intermittent pneumatic system

Technical Pneumatics
1

Our team wants to use our robot from Breakaway as a test bed for some ideas for this year. After restoring the parts borrowed for LogoMotion we’re left with a set of intermittent problems.
The drive system works properly, but everything to do with pneumatics is at best intermittent.

Sometimes the Spike driving the compressor doesn’t turn on, sometimes it does. Sometimes the pressure limit switch works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes the actuator (which is what we want to test) works, sometimes it doesn’t.

We’ve changed all the usual suspects, all the PWM cables, the Spike, even the pneumatics interface module in the cRio. All to no avail. The Driver Station shows that the button on the joystick which should fire the actuator is being read correctly.

Since all the strangeness is happening in the pneumatics and in different parts of the system, I suspect a software problem. I don’t know LabView at all and our software guy inherited all the code and hasn’t been able to get it working.

Has anyone come up against something like this? Or do you have any ideas of what (probably obvious) thing we are missing?

2

You can tell if a signal is being sent to the relay output on the digital side car if there is a green light next to the the relay output. With the robot enabled check to see of the light next to the PWM cable on the digital side car leading to the spike corresponding to the compressor is green. If it is it means that the light on the spike should turn green (and power should be run to the compressor). If not, it means the problem is with the pressure switch or digital sidecar. Make sure there is power to the digital sidecar by making sure all three lights labeled “5V”, “6V”, and BAT are green. If all three aren’t lit, check to see if the PDB setup for the digital sidecar is correct (power, ground, new breaker). If all else fails, try a new pressure switch. If none of these work, my money is on a software issue :stuck_out_tongue: