Robot Not working

ROBOMOM

I'm back for some more advice. The motor align downloads and runs okay but the sumo bot has no movement. I reset it and it still has no movement. My son said that when he first put the batteries in that the bot smoked alittle and he took the batteries out. I'm wondering if he might have shorted something?He had the neg and pos power wires in the same location(both in pos). I connected them the right way and the bots power shows green when I turn it on. thanks

Mike Green

If you let the magic smoke out, sometimes there's not enough magic left to move the robot.

It's good that the program seems to run. That says that the microcontroller has survived.
The servo motors have components inside that can be damaged with reversed power polarity.

Do the servos move at all with the use of the alignment program? When the alignment program
is running, can you turn the motor shafts? They'll be very stiff, but should turn somewhat. They
shouldn't turn easily when the power is on and a program is attempting to control them.

There are some other sample programs in the "Robotics for the BoeBot" manual that you can
download from Parallax's website. These both explain how servos work and allow you to test
and adjust them.

ROBOMOM

I can manually move the wheels if that is what you mean by servos. While the alignment program is working I am able to move the wheels pretty easily.

Franklin

robomom said...
While the alignment program is working I am able to move the wheels pretty easily.

That isn't a good sign on a normal servo but for these it might not be that bad. Could you attach the exact code you download to the bot? just do a reply and use the attachment manager to attach the file. It's the best way because it lets us see the code as written to the bot and not what you thought you wrote.

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- Stephen

ROBOMOM

I have attached the file. We used the reset then put the power to #2( the power shows green ok) then downloaded and run the program. It looks like it runs okay we got no error messages and at the end is says that it was successful. although the bot still isn't working.

Franklin

That program is for aligning the servos and, if it works the motors should not be turning. if you adjust the screw in the servo they should then start to run in one or the other direction but you want them to be stopped. That is the mission of this program. Continue on to the mext step.

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- Stephen

ROBOMOM

I tried the next step and the bot didn't move: I tried the sumobot motor test.

Mike Green

This is not a good sign. Assume you may have damaged servo motors. Plan on calling Parallax's technical support after New Year's and they can walk you through some other testing. Assuming that it's the servos, they can be replaced easily enough and they're not expensive