Every time we turn on our cortex, the solenoids for the pneumatics activate and deactivate repeatedly, and once the controller connects, it stops. This wastes a lot of air pressure. Does anyone know why this problem happens, or how to fix it?
This can happen with some combinations of cortex and solenoid driver. We discussed this last year in this thread.
Pneumatics Programming Problem
As far as we can tell it’s due to the fact that IO ports are initially configured as inputs, there is a weak pullup resistor that under certain circumstances allows the voltage to be high enough to turn on the solenoid driver. Once the code reconfigures the port as an output the driver is turned off, when VEXnet causes a reconnect this process is repeated.
Many teams have the air turned off until the cortex has connected to the joystick and then turn it on.