Issues with initial start

[rait right]

Hello, Having some issues. It makes 2 beeps and moves legs. After that, it moves all the servos to max position and keeps them their, also bec goes hot after that. Likley because of massive amp draw. I have some random analog servos with 180 deg rotation. I have shorted the 2 connectors on servo board and also shorted pin 4 and 5 or 5 and 6 on nano, for analog operation. Im running out of ideas.
Here is the video https://youtu.be/L34JjPwM9P8

[vorpalrobotics]

Hi,

A couple of questions to help track this down:

1) did you get the kit from us, or self-source?

2) is the video in stop mode? What happens in test mode?

[rait right]

Hello.
Yes, stop mode. It is self-sourced, changing pot value dosent make difference. I wired pot like the picture in Your webpage.  Im willing for donation, if getting this thing going. Whats suppose to happen, when disconnecting both data leads from nano to servo plate?

[vorpalrobotics]

Oh don't worry, I wasn't looking for a donation. I'm willing to help whether you bought from us or not. I just need to know where you got the parts because certain types of problem happen more often with self-sourcers, so it helps me figure out what's going on.

Okay, if your pot isn't working, that's a big part of the problem. Because if you didn't have the robot in ADJUST mode when you put the servo horns on, you can't be sure where the horns are supposed to be. The entire problem could simply be that the horns are not installed in the right position.

So what you want to do is hook the robot up to a serial port and use the Arduino IDE to look and see what's happening in when you turn the dial. It will print out what mode it thinks its in. (STOP, TEST, ADJUST, DEMO, RC).

Although you may have wired the pot the right way, I see a lot of pots that are defective, and also if you hold the soldering iron on the lead more than about 10 seconds you'll burn up the pot internally and it will likely give bad readings or no readings at all.

If you disconnect the SDA/SCL pins on the servo driver then the servos should not move at all. They won't get any signal that tells them to move. They'll just sit there, slack, you should be able to gently move them with your hand since they won't be under power.

Hope this helps!

[rait right]

I manually center the servos and I havent solder pot, used these wires. When i connect serial port monitor I get some nonsens, when i rotate the knob, these nonsense moves faster ( sample ⸮x⸮xx ). I tested pot, seems to work, it starts with zero volatge at the stop and 5 v output at the rc.. Disconnecting data pins, make servos move once, when get powered and buzzer beeping. so I guess servo plate is not the problem. Reflashed the nano several times. No idea what is going on :D

[vorpalrobotics]

Make sure you have the serial monitor speed set to 9600 and you should see the debug output.

You centered the servos by using a servo tester or something? When you rotate the pot, do you hear the buzzer make tones? The tones should happen roughly as you pass each word on the dial, and they should get higher pitched as you turn. that would confirm that the pot is reading properly for the nano.

You have a 5v nano, right? 328p?

[rait right]

Hello, yes setting baudrate to 9600 seems to help, it does show modes. When the pot is in stop position it shows some data like :

TRIMS:unset

Stand Mode, Sensors:

 A3=98 A6=135 A7=104 Dist=1000

Stand Mode, Sensors:

 A3=35 A6=36 A7=38 Dist=1000

Rotating knob shows all modes. Buzzer does change tone. I manually cranked servos one side to other to know where the center is, then put on these servo arms at 90 degrees. Yes i have 5v nano with 328p chip. i connected the nano from output of this bec, not before the bec as Your insturction shows, dose this make any difference? I tried to power servo board from small powersupley, this shows short circut. When i disconnect the shunt between v+ and vcc, then it dosent. 

[vorpalrobotics]

Okay, now we're making progress. 

First: Of course how you hook up the nano matters! The electrical system is the way it is for many different reasons. Taking power directly from the BEC will cause your robot to constantly reboot as minor voltage sags cause the nano and HC05 to brown out.  However, this is probably not the cause of the particular problem we're discussing.

Second: The "curling up and dying" behavior can be caused by a bad BEC. Are you using the exact BEC we use? (A picture is in the instructions). If you've substituted, you could have a bec that claims to output 3A but really dies much sooner than that. We have a list of BECs that are known to be bad on the circuit diagram page for self-sourcers.

Third: If you're detecting a short when V+ and VCC are connected on the servo driver, then either your servo driver board is bad or one of the devices connected to the servo driver is bad (or wiring is wrong, but let's assume you've double-checked that.)

One candidate is the buzzer, I've seen that happen. However, you are now reporting that the buzzer is working, so that's not likely

If you've got the ultrasonic rangefinder connected, disconnect that and try again. If everything works, that was the issue.

If you have a second servo driver, you could swap that in. But in my experience, that's rarely the issue, so let's try other things first if you don't have a spare.

If none of the above is the problem, then that leaves just the servos. Cheap servos often do have defects and some of those defects can cause a huge current draw.

You could disconnect every servo, then connect them back one by one. If the first one works, put in a second, a third, etc until failure occurs. If the first one doesn't work, then disconnect it and add a different one. By doing this, you'll figure out which servo is the problem in 5 or 10 minutes.

Hope this helps!

[rait right]

Problem was the simplest one, reconnected the nano before the bec. Servos does make lots of buzzing sound, is this something i need to pay attention? Hows your battery pack connected are batterys inside paralel or in series?

[vorpalrobotics]

Great! Buzzing servos are pretty normal with the fake ones you tend to get off places like AliExpress. They'll need to be replaced as they burn out.

Batteries are in series.

[rait right]

Hello again, what is the diffenrece between the two version of remote source code? Should bt modules use 9600 or 38400 baudrate?

[vorpalrobotics]

Hello,

The UARTS on the bluetooth modules run at 38400.  The serial monitor on the arduino runs at 9600.

There's only one top level version on github.  In the VORPALFILES folder there is a debugging version of the gamepad code marked REV that is there just to help one particular customer debug an odd issue.