spike relay help

FIRST General Forum
1

In LabView, we are having trouble with our spike relays. the physical spike is wired correctly and running, but it is not being read in LabView. Any suggestions or any recommendations would be helpful. Thanks from team Falcon 2600

2

What are you trying to “read” from the Spike?
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3

i mean the spike is not responding, but the light is on and correctly wired

4

Are the Digital Sidecar 3 power LEDs all bright green?
Are the Digital Sidecar Relay LEDs lighting up when they should?
Off = off
Red - reverse
green = forward
red & green = On
If those aren’t lighting and the Driver Station reports Communications, Robot Code, and Enabled, then your code is not doing what you think it should.

If the LEDs are lighting up properly, then it’ll be between the Digital Sidecar and the Spike.

5

Hello, I am the programmer for the 2600 team and I have now tried everything that I can think of. First off some background info we have three spike relays two for motors and one for the compressor. When I enable the robot with my project(see attached) deployed and running the relays do not respond at all. I have tried sending user data of both the status of one relay and any errors to the driver station and what I find weird is that it didn’t even show “off” never mind forward or reverse. I have checked and double checked the wiring and finally tried formatting the cRIO and running the relay example provided with lab view all to no avail. To answer your question, the light is constantly just on, the amber yellow green color. Thanks in advance for everyone’s time and help.
PJ

2012.zip (189 KB)


2012.zip (189 KB)

6

Did you check everything that Mark suggested in post#4?
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7

The Spike light just means it’s getting 12v power.

On the Digital Sidecar are 8 paired sets of red and green LEDs, one pair for each of the Relay outputs. It’s that trough in front of the Relay signal pin connections.
What are they doing, if anything?

Does your 37-pin cable that connects to the Digital Sidecar form a simple loop or does it form a mobius strip when plugged into itself? Since, so many of those Kit cables were wired incorrectly this year that’s probably something you might have already checked.

P.S.
The code you posted isn’t functional. Did you make an untested change after your test and post that?

8

Thanks for pointing that out, re-reading it I noticed I read the dio relay leds wrong and just thought it said for the leds on the spike. I hadn’t thought of it but they don’t light up at all but im not sure what could account for that especially after trying the example that came with labview.

9

I hadn’t checked the cable and we are using the one that came with the kit this year.

10

And I didn’t notice the ps sorry, what about the code isn’t functional, I started just changing a lot of things rushing around so im not completely sure what I did but I do have older versions saved. What’s wrong with it though? Thanks again for all the help and quick replies.

11

Nothing serious.
You were partway through adding in your messages to be written to the Driver Station in Teleop, so Teleop is broken. It has two tunnels that are undefined (unwired).

Your code looks like the Relay parts should work fine.

You have a bug in Begin that will prevent your code from running though.
The Compressor Control Loop must be removed. It’s already in Periodic Tasks where it should be.

The Compressor Control Loop is never ending, so placed in Begin it never lets Begin finish and move on to Teleop.

12

Yes, I had been working on the message before and after the last trial but when it was connected, the messages box was simply blank. What was the problem with the digital sidecar connector, I hadn’t read anything on that? I added the control loop in after trying it without it, just to see if it would change anything.

13

Here’s FIRST’s description of the cable problem: http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2012_Assets/DB37%20Ribbon%20Cable%20Assembly%20-%20Rework%20Instructions.pdf

It’s linked from the KOP Control System page.

14

Thanks for all your help ill be in tomorrow working on so hopefully this is the solution. Thanks again.

15

P.S.
There’s more left over wrongness that should be dealt with. I don’t know everything that may be hidden, but:

  • Robot Main needs Begin tied in to the While loop. You don’t want Teleop called before the Begin finishes Opening everything.
  • Begin has a Driver Station Start COM that doesn’t belong there. It’s already in Robot Main where it belongs.