During driver practice, the intake suddenly stopped working. We checked to see what the issue was and the motor was extremely hot to touch. Bringing up phoenix tuner showed it at 130°C.
Upon further inspection, we found that when you plugged the motor into power, it was emitting a high pitch whine (stalling?), as heard in the video below, even though the robot was disabled!
We removed the power pole adaptor and found nothing wrong with it, so the fault is expected to be internal, however we don’t want to void the warranty to have a look.
Has anyone seen this before? And/or, does anyone have any insight into what the problem might be?
The Kraken is only rated for 100 Celsius, so it’s very possible that you went too far past the limit and just have a dead Kraken. You might be able to contact WCP and see what they can do about it but IMO 130c is pretty insane for a motor to withstand.
We got the self test, so I’ll be sending that email when I get home.
We don’t have any limits, just press the button and it sends it.
Unfortunately, just seconds after hitting copy, the magic smoke was released. Compared to a bag or 775, the kraken smoke smells… kinda nice… Compliments on the next big fragrance
Design a luxurious perfume bottle for a humorous parody fragrance called ‘Eau de Kraken X60’. The bottle should look high-end, with a clear glass structure and a sophisticated cap. Incorporate subtle mechanical or industrial design elements to imply it’s themed around the scent of a burnt motor, like metallic accents or a small, stylized flame or smoke motif. The name ‘Eau de Kraken X60’ should be prominently displayed on the bottle. Exclude any text at the bottom, focusing on a minimalist and elegant aesthetic that playfully contrasts with the idea of a motor-inspired scent. The background should be plain to enhance the bottle’s appearance as if it’s for an advertisement.
I don’t know about rating, but it was my understanding at least (and our own observations from using them) that the Krakens go into Thermal Protection at about 100C and won’t function at all until they cool down a bit. Clearly, in this case, something happened to cause it to exceed this limit.
Above 100C you start melting solder on a lot of electronics in general. There’s a reason most computer CPUs have similar thermal limits.
EDIT:
Just watched this video. That is NOT a happy Kraken noise, even for a stall.
We’ve burned out a kraken on our swerve drive when some carpet tape got stuck in the wheel; I assume the thermal protection you mentioned wasn’t working properly for us. Is there documentation somewhere you can point me to on the thermal protection?
We released a critical firmware update at the end of February that improved the thermal management of the Krakens. Users who had Tuner connected to the internet at least once after the update was published would have the colors of the devices in Tuner show “red” with a critical message.
Users should always attempt to use the latest available firmware unless otherwise noted.
If you have a Kraken that you think was damaged due to a thermal failure, shoot an email to [email protected] and let’s investigate it.
I dont know if I posted it here but we killed one days later on March 2nd, same thing the log showed the motor at over 130c. We had to hot swap the motor right before comp and didnt reflash firmware and killed the motor within about an hour, didnt catch it until after a full day of competition, when im at the shop later I can show the damage. The rotor no longer spins at all… I reached out to WCP after it happened and we chose not to send it back since we thought it was cool to have one of the few/first dead krakens
