Service
This section is to help you if your robot is not
driving straight, or if it is having drive problems in general. If your
question is not answered here, please contact us
email
or you can
call us on the phone. 801-489-4466 Ext 3
This page is organized by problem. Look below to find
a problem most similar to the one you have; the link will then direct you to
the answer.
When the joystick is moved forward, the robotonly goes directly right or left, but will not move forward.
This happens when one
of the motors is not turning. This either means that the motor is bad or for
some reason power is not getting to the motor. The first thing that we will
want to check is the power. There is a fuse for each of the motors. If one
of the fuses is blown, then it would cause your robot to have the problem
that is described above. To check the fuse you will need to open the lid on
the electronics box.
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Locate the electronics box in your robot (for Pluggies there is no box,
the fuse block is located directly below the circuit board); it willeither be a silver or black metal with voice equipment velcroed on.
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Make sure that the power of your robot is in the off position, then
unplug the wires that are going from inside the electronics box to the
lid. (This is not essential, but it makes it possible to completelyremove the lid).
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After unpluging the wires, unscrew the four screws on the corners ofthe lid.
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Slowly remove the lid; the fan on the lid is still connected to the
main board. To completely remove the lid, you must first unplug the fanwires.
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Now that the lid is removed, you should look near the switch and see
the fuse block. There will be six fuses here. Two of these will have
blue wires coming out; these are the fuses for the drive. You should
make sure that all of your fuses are good; if you have a volt meter, you
should do a continuity test as sometimes a visual test is unreliable. If
you do have a volt meter, you should test out the voltage coming fromthe blue wires. This should read at least 12 volts.
If you find that a burnt fuse is not your problem, then you will want to
check to see if a motor is bad.
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With your robot in the off position, you will want to find the blue and
yellow wires directly in front of the robot battery. These wires go tothe motors.
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After locating these wires, you will want to unplug the connectors,then plug them into the opposite motors.
- After you have swapped wires, try driving your robot again.
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If your robot is having the opposite problem (ie only the right motor
was turning, but now the left motor is turning) then you will know it is
a not a problem with the motors. If you do this test and find out that a
similar problem is occurring (ie the right motor was not moving, and it
is still not moving) then you will know that you have a motorproblem.
If the problem is a burnt out fuse then you simply replace this. If you find
out you have a bad motor, please contact service so they can help you resolve
your problem. If neither of these suggestions help you determine where your
problem is then you most likely have an intermittent problem on the circuit
board. If this is the case, please contact the service department.
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As soon as therobot or RC is turned on, the robot begins to move on its own.
This is usually a problem
with the remote control. To determine if this is the case, turn your robot
on first, then turn on the RC afterward. If the robot only moves after the
RC is turned on, then the problem is with the remote control.
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If you have live
sliders on your RC, make sure that they are in the centered position.
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The problem you
are having with the RC is that the joystick potentiometers that control
the drive are no longer centered. This is quite common if you have the
Airtronics RC. This can be fixed, but we recommend that you upgrade to
the Hi-Tec RC.
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If you would like
to try fixing this problem yourself, you should open up the back of your
RC and contact someone in the service department who can help you figure
out what you need to do to get the joystick centered again.
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The robotsometimes goes whiggity whack.
When the robot
receives weak or intermittent signal it will often do crazy things. This
happens when the operator is operating a long distance, or if the battery
power inside the RC is getting low.
This problem should only happen on robots with older software or an older RC
such as an Airtronics RC. To fix this problem you should always be within
range and make sure your batteries are fully charged. The best solution to
this problem is that you upgrade to the the newest RC (Hi-Tec) andsoftware.
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The robotwill not drive straight.
There is a way
that you can adjust the drive of your robot.
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The easiest way to do this is if you have live sliders. The sliders
are located to the left and underneath the drive joystick. If your robot
is veering left, move the slider a bit to the right to compensate. To
the opposite if it is veering right. If your robot does not have live
sliders, or if this does not completely fix the problem, continue
reading. Note* These next steps are only applicable if you have aversion 6 or later robot.
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First you will need to remove the lid from the electronics panel. (seeabove for how to do this)
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Look on the board for two small potentiometers (they will look like
cubes with a small screw you can adjust with a precision screwdriver).
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The top potentiometer is for drive forward and the bottom potentiometeris for drive backward.
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If your robot is moving to the right going FORWARD then you will want
to turn the TOP potentiometer clockwise. If it is going left, you turnit counter clockwise.
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If your robot is moving to the right going BACKWARD then you will want
to turn the BOTTOM potentiometer clockwise. If it is going left, youturn it counter clockwise.
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