Wrong motor running

VEX V5 Technical Support
1

When testing my arm, rather than my arm motor running, a seperate motor started running for no apparent reason. I checked my code but I was only assigning power to the arm motor. I did a firmware update but the problem was still there. I then rewrote the code once with competition template and once just running the arm motor. The problem was still there. As we have a competition in 2 weeks, this problem needs an urgent fix.

2

I know this is obvious, but have you made sure that you plugged in the motors to the right ports? Maybe you plugged in some other motor into the arm motor port.

3

If thats not it, then go ahead and post your code. Also you should check that you haven’t mixed up the motor controller outputs between two motors (something very easy to do!)

4

Short circuit?

5

If possible, try a different cortex.

6

To make sure you really test just that ONE motor, unplug every single motor (and sensor, maybe) except that arm motor. Then, take a look at your motors & sensors setup to make sure you have the motor matched to the port. If it still isn’t working, then you probably have a bad/short-circuited cortex or controller. You might also want to double-check that the motor is assigned to the correct button on the controller, if that is what you’re using.

7

I’ve had this problem many times before, and here are a few solutions that worked for me.

  1. Make sure the motor is declared correctly in the code. If the motor is called

motor(armLiftMotor)

and you declared


motor(liftArmMotor) =  127;

, the cortex will spin a random motor at full speed.

  1. Make sure the motor is plugged into the right port. If a random motor is plugged into the arm port, it will spin that motor at full speed.

  2. Check the hardware. If one of the wires is exposed on one of the extension chords, it could cause a short circuit.

  3. Make sure the logic in your code is right. It’s possible you actually told the wrong motor to spin, while telling the right motor not to.

If none of these steps work, I’d suggest posting your code and a video, and we might be able to help you more. Good luck!