We are having difficulties getting the left and right values with our robot working properly. We are using default labview software distribution that comes on the provided flashdrive. We have already checked the wiring for polarity issues and found none. We swithed the motor drive wire that runs to both speed controlers on board to check if that would fix the issue and it instead switched backwards and forwards. One of the speed controllers when the robot is operated with the joystick lights up red. This occurence switced when we switch the wiring on the speed controllers. We have tried poking around the program to check for issues and found none. Any suggestions?
Edit: We ran the code from the netbook and monitored the joystick values. Left is negative, right is positive, and forward is negative and backwards is positive.
What do you want it to do, and what does it do instead?
If you’re using the unmodified default robot project, you should verify that your left motor is being controlled by a Jaguar connected to PWM1, and your right motor is being controlled by a Jaguar connected to PWM2. If the motors do not run in the direction you expect, you can either swap the wires on the output of the Jaguar, or you can change the “Inverted” constant in the code for the appropriate motor.
We tried switching the wires attached to the jaguars and this made front go back but fixed left and right. We had discussed something along the lines of that inversion method you suggested. How would we go about doing this?
If turning left and right works properly but front and back are reversed, I would guess that you have your PWM connections swapped. The basic 2012 robot project wants PWM1 to go to the Jaguar controlling the left motor, and PWM2 to go to the Jaguar controlling the right motor. That’s the first thing you need to check, before you worry about which direction the motors are running.
Or you could just decide to call the other end of the robot “front” and be done with it.