Joystick not working properly - wont' go right, up, or down - only left works

[deborah_at_frui]

When we push on the joystick up, down, or right nothing happens but when we push to the left the robot moves.  In fact, if we push left and slightly up the robot moves that direction or left and slightly down the robot goes in the that direction.  Is the joystick not aligned and if so how is that fixed?

Thanks for all the help with us newbies!

[nathand]

Are you certain that you have selected the correct drive system (Tank or Arcade) and the correct motor controllers (Jagwire or Victor)?

With the driver station running, you can see the outputs to the motors (PWM) and, I think, the signals from the joystick.  You can also probe the signals from the joystick in your LabVIEW code.  Are the PWM channels responding to the joystick?  Is the joystick reading properly?  For each axis, you should get -1 when pushed all the way in one direction and +1 when pushed all the way in the other direction.

[NI-Bob]

Hello Deborah,

Were you able to get your joysticks working properly with the information that Nathan gave you?

Just in case you weren't able to, I had a few questions/recommendations.  First of all, what code are you using to test out your robot.  If you use the default code in a new FRC cRIO Robot Project you should be able to get your system working with a 2 motor control arcade drive.  My recommendation is to start out by testing this behavior to ensure that it is not an issue with the code.  Here are instructions on how to deploy default code to your robot: [FRC 2010] How Do I Deploy Default Code to My Robot?

If you are not able to get the joystick working with this default code I highly suggest that you double check the wiring of the robot.  The default code is set up to use PWM1 and PWM2 from the Digital Module in Slot 4.  The information that Nathan provided above will also help troubleshoot if it is a coding issue or if it is a hardware issue.

I hope this helps!  Let us know if you have any further questions.

Thanks!

Bob H

NI FIRST Support

[deborah_at_frui]

No we still didn't get it to work today after trying what was listed above.  We're now checking all the wires.  Here's one problem we're having with the wiring:  the students want to use 4 motors instead of 2 so we have 2 motors both connected to 1 jaguar on one side of the robot and 2 other motors connected to another jaguar on the other side of the robot.  Do you think this could cause problems?  If so, we'll use 4 jaguars and have 1 motor per jaguar.  We're using the default code right now so will we have to go into the code and add the 2 extra jaguars?

[deborah_at_frui]

We went back through our wiring comparing it to the Distribution Diagram and noticed that we don't have anything

connected to the Mobile Device Control (SMC Solenoid?).  What is that and is that the problem?

Also, our power on our laptop is showing 9.6 but the battery has 12.6 volts according to our Voltmeter.  Also, the voltmeter says their is 12.6 volts going into the cRIO so any ideas on that?

[nathand]

deborah_at_fruitvale wrote:

No we still didn't get it to work today after trying what was listed above.  We're now checking all the wires.  Here's one problem we're having with the wiring:  the students want to use 4 motors instead of 2 so we have 2 motors both connected to 1 jaguar on one side of the robot and 2 other motors connected to another jaguar on the other side of the robot.  Do you think this could cause problems?  If so, we'll use 4 jaguars and have 1 motor per jaguar.  We're using the default code right now so will we have to go into the code and add the 2 extra jaguars?

When I wrote "wires" I meant the lines inside your LabVIEW code... you can probe those easily by clicking on them while the code is running, or by right-clicking and choosing probe when the code is not running.  That will pop up a window that shows the value on that wire as the code executes, which you can use to confirm that you're reading the joysticks properly.  You can then similarly check the output to the motor drivers.