We are working on refining our drive train on our robot and have encountered a problem with overloading the 30 amp breakers supplying power to the wheels. We are using a four-wheel drive setup with a tank drive to steer. We have changed the gear ratio once and will be changing it again but time is running out. We are very weak in the area of programming and wonder if anyone could help, is it possible to reduce the power output to the motors by changing the default code in the robot controller? We are running the 2 big black motors using speed controllers from PWM-1 and PWM-2. We have played with changing the default to tank steer with one joystick, using the changes found on Innovation First site. This gives us a sense that we can successful change the code and up load it to the controller if someone would be able to supply use with the changes that need to be made. Any suggestions or resources you could provide would be very helpful
It sounds like your gear ratio is still too high.
The stall loads on these motors are a killer and if you try to accelerate too fast you might be blowing the breakers.
One thing that helps is to ramp up the speed. There are some white papers out there that talk about first order filters where the driver jerking the joystick around gets smoothed out on the way to the motors.
Good luck. Once our drive train is put together, I suspect I may be scratching my head on this as well.
Also, when you do trip a breaker, give it some time to cool down or it will trip more easily than before.
Here are some code bits to try
p1_xfilter VAR byte 'Filtered X input on Port 1
p1_yfilter VAR byte 'Filtered Y input on Port1 p1_xfiltercoef CON 100
p1_yfiltercoef CON 100
p1_yfilter=p1_yfilter+((256+p1_y-p1_yfilter)p1_yfiltercoef/200)-(256p1_yfiltercoef/200)
p1_xfilter=p1_xfilter+((256+p1_x-p1_xfilter)p1_xfiltercoef/200)-(256p1_xfiltercoef/200)
p1_y = p1_yfilter
p1_x = p1_xfilter
This will slow down the abrubt changes to the p1_x and p1_y values
I can give you code to slow it down a % of full but it sounds like you are getting a spike from either a big change in speed or there is too much load on steering (I can’t help you on the second)
P.S. you can play with the coeficients to ramp slower or faster
I think this code came from MOE a few years ago