Unidentified Program

On our robot we have a ghost program that makes it run by itself. For instance, today we were at the C.E. Hannah VEX IQ Competion in Oxford, Alabama and during the Skills Competion we were balanced on the bridge and our robot started turning. I believe that it is only the right side doing this. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

You need to calibrate the controller. Use the tether cable, then on the brain, select “Calibrate the controller” and follow the instructions.
The joysticks are analog instruments with -100% - 100% range and uncertain “zero” position. The calibration sorts out any variance in the measurements and manufacturing tolerances.

Hunter,

Calibrating will fix it sometimes, but there are 2 other possibilities:

  1. The joystick is getting stuck. This might be due to them being dirty or old.

  2. The program you are running does not have a “Dead Zone”. Those controllers are not perfect they can be perfectly functional and still not return to the 0,0 position. Therefore, I recommend your students program in a “dead zone”. Just a simple bit of code that stops the motor if the channel is < 20% AND > -20%. this will keep the robot from “creeping” when the sticks are near but not quite at 0,0.

Paul