I posted this in the official forum but after a search and seeing my exact problem unanswered I thought maybe I would post here.
First let me say that my temper is high so forgive any frustrated rantings. Second, I’m a new coach (mom) with an almost brand-new middle school team (only one kid with experience who went to worlds last year so he’s no slouch) of homeschool boys. Third, I’m calling VEX tomorrow but have little confidence in them at the moment.
Our issue is with the ports on the “brain” and motors. The cords are so loose that we can’t keep them connected. While they are not actually falling out, they wiggle like a loose tooth. Some appear to not work at all but then will magically connect to a specific motor with a specific cord if you hold it just right. Talk about frustrating! My poor boys spent TWO HOURS trying to get their motors attached tonight and this is the SECOND time we’ve had to do this (a redesign of the bot meant we had to disconnect everything). There’s so much tape and rubber bands holding cords in specific positions that it looks like Frankenstein.
Tonight, we were literally holding cords in place with our fingers just to try and see if the motors would respond but they did not. I realize that could be a code issue so I’m not super concerned yet about it but at that point my kids were so upset that I just sent them home.
I’m so disappointed in the V5 product. It’s got so much potential and we were over the moon to have it our first year as a team. All of our competitors have the old systems and they are wiping the floor with us! Our league can’t even do a true autonomous with us because their system doesn’t work with the V5 for whatever reason.
The only other teams we know of who have V5 are having no issues with their cords or ports. We have tried every possible combination of cords (VEX original, team made, pushing hard, pulling, short wires, long wires) and nothing is working consistently.
Everything I see in the forums here is about blown ports. I don’t know if ours are truly blown (a few motors seem to be no longer connecting tonight but that’s a first) or if it’s just the shoddy connections. Am I really the only team experiencing this?
I have a video of the fiasco but it’s too big to upload here. Bah!
I’m sorry to hear you are having so many problems, it’s not something I’ve seen other teams experience, at least not to this extent.
It would be useful to see some photos showing how the cable is connecting to the V5 brain.
You can rule out issues with programming by running the motors using the V5 motor dashboard.
The V5 should work in a competition in exactly the same way as the cortex did, same connection to field control.
Our team has at least one brain (out of five) with similar problems and we had another team at our last event with the same problem as well. No difference between Vex manufactured wires or those created by our team. Our ‘workaround’ for the situation was to ‘wedge’ the end of a zip tie between the wire end connector and the outer wall of the brain port. This was the only way we could get a tight enough connection. I don’t believe that all of our ports on the brain are in this condition- but I believe it’s at least 50% of the ports. We also had a motor with the same problem and rolled a small piece of electrical tape several times and created a ‘wedge’ out of that as well.
Hopefully ‘wedging’ something will help. I will also be contacting Vex about a replacement.
We did the tape thing and also used rubber bands to hold them in place. Last night I tried wedging stuff but had zero success. I didn’t try the zip tie yet, just folds of tape and rubber bands pieces.
Our wires are inserted like they are supposed to be, with the little VEX clips. But we have to jam other stuff into the spaces around them to get them to stay “connected”. THey do not fall out just don’t register that they are attached. It happens on the motor ports and the brain ports.
And this is a link to a YouTube video I posted today about it. It’s us trying to get them to stay connected last night.
OH. We ran the diagnostic you mentioned above this afternoon. The motors are ok.
I don’t know why they had so much trouble with the V5 at our league event. The guy is a wiz so I was surprised. I’m sure it’ll be fixed by our next competition in a week. I hope, anyway.
We tested one of the motors that we couldn’t get to connect last night and removed from the machine and it appears to be toast. No amount of giggling the wires on either the motor port or brain (even the ports / wires that “always” work) changed anything. So now we’re down a motor. sadness…
Neither the supplied wires not custom length created wires work consistently. We’ve had other teams lend us their wires (which worked fine for them) and the problem continued. We are making them correctly.
VEX support responded saying there is no fun for this problem so the unit needs to be replaced. Hopefully it’ll be here before our next competition in a week. Wish us luck. If you are having this issue, call VEX now!
So now we’re down a motor. sadness…