Anyone Else Have Potentiometer Troubles?

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1

I had a strange issue with one of my potentiometers. It wasn’t relaying values back to the cortex the way it should. Usually a potentiometer should record values between 0 and 4095, but this one was recording at a starting point of ~3175. This value would then scale all the way up to 4095, it would just do so by going through less numbers on the way. The freedom of rotation was just fine, this broken potentiometer would rotate the same amount of degrees as a regular, functional one.

As I was testing this broken potentiometer to find the highest and lowest values it would record, so I could write them down, the potentiometer suddenly was fixed. Now it’s completely functional like any other potentiometer.

Has anyone else had this problem? Anyone know what caused it? Should I be worried about this reoccurring (hopefully not at a competition)?

Thanks.

-Mitchell

2

I can almost guarantee there was some run out in the axle that the potentiometer was on. If there was some wear to the bearings or even a slight bend in the shaft it could cause these very symptoms.

3

Looks like you were right. Other axles aren’t causing this problem.

Thank you.
-Mitchell