Lately, we have had a number of the Motor 29 controllers go bad. Does anyone have an idea as to why this happens? At $10 a pop, I was hoping they would be more reliable.
It’s usually if there is a short in the wires of one of your motors somewhere. is it the same one on your robot that goes pop all the time to help you identify the bad motor?
Those motor controllers are very reliable. You most likely have one or more motors with bad wiring. That’s what it’s always been for us when we’ve had a motor controller fail. Sometimes it is an intermittent short of just a single strand of the multistrand wire.
Yeah, motor controllers break all the time for us, just try to find a need one or buy one. Unfortunately the wire frays or something breaks inside the motor controller. Unless, you have someone that can fix them, otherwise I would just get a new one.
5 years as a coach.
10 teams per year.
Multiple rebuilds per team.
Literally hundreds of robots.
I have seen a faulty motor controller maybe ten times. I would definitely look somewhere else for the problem.
-
Those are the cheapest motor controllers like that you can find on the market.
-
I would look at the wires on all your motors. They are almost certainly the problem.
I use those motor controllers on many other projects, sometimes driving much larger motors. You can connect one to any standard servo channel on an R/C receiver, hook up a generic motor, and you’re ready to go. If you don’t short out the driven (2-wire) side, they’re practically indestructible.
A lot of people doing small weight battle bots use them everywhere. They are cheap, simple and durable. Probably the Vex part most suited to the general market that exists.
Is there a way to test a controller, other than hooking it up to a different motor than what it was previously?