I bought an ald5 robot for this years science Olympiad contest. But so far the robot has been giving me troubles. Its a AL5D with botboarduino1 board with the ps2 controller. Im using a wired ps2 not a wireless one. It does this weird thing so that when it turns on it wont stay still. the robot turns left and moves up without me touching the remote. if i move the remote around it will stop temporarily but its jerky in its movement and wont stay still. idk if this is a problem with the connections on the board. i Think they are right but i will take a pic and put it in this post. (i do not know a lot about boards or circuits or anything so the guides were really hard to follow). the wrist servo does this weird thing too. i have it put on correctly but when i try to move the wrist it wont angle below parallel to the surface its on. so that’s a problem because i cant pick up nails on the ground like i need to because it wont go down. i think its definitely a program problem or a connection or remote problem. I see you tube videos of other al5d robots and they are smooth but mine jerks and movements like going up down in and away jerks and isn’t accurate. and sometimes movements like that make the wrist servo curl the end pointing up and its annoying to have to keep that level while moving the robot around. i also have no clue if the ps2 connection to the board is right because every diagram i have seen has wires different colors and way different then mine. i have a connection with 4 wires (in order Blue Orange Yellow Purple) a two pin connector with three wires coming out (Red White Black) and then two single ones that are brown and green.i don’t have the single ones connected because i couldn’t find out if they did. i am going to try a new controller soon but something somewhere on my robot is really messed up. sorry for the long post but any help is appreciated.
link for tutorial for ps2 botboard lynxmotion.com/images/html/build091b.htm
link for code i have on my robot github.com/Lynxmotion/Arms/zipball/Botboarduino As in the guide i used arduino software with ps2x library
Generic robot [attachment=2]IMG_1134.JPG[/attachment]
Closer look [attachment=1]IMG_1136.JPG[/attachment]
Connections [attachment=0]IMG_1137.JPG[/attachment]
Your jumper next to pins 10-11-12 is still in place - the robot would be using 5V from the onboard regulator instead of “VS” (Servo voltage) from the wall adapter. Set this jumper to VS. Same goes for the jumper next to pins 3-4-5. The jumper next to 6-7-8 should remain at 5V to power the remote at 5V.
How are you powering the BotBoarduino? If it’s powered via USB, the second On/Off switch is of no use. Check that the jumper in position 17 (referring to the manual) is set to USB, and that you removed the jumper VS = VL in position 13.
Before we check out the cable colors, try the above two.
In the pics above i did not see that the 9v battery that im using to power the controller (i believe) was hidden. So here’s some better pics with the battery. I also put a pic of the wall adapter idk if it’ll help but some other people posted it so why not. so the switch on the right is the wall adapter and the switch on the left is the 9v battery. Now that you know what im using to power the other switch and that im not using usb power are my jumpers still in the wrong place. I think they are ok but i dont know. any help would be appreciated. i also posted some pics of the wrist. in those pics i cant get the wrist to go down any farther so its pointed down. the motor is on correctly so thats not the problem. i can turn the whole wrist around but then the controls are inverted but it can go down. so see what you think, thanks. Next week is our competition (Montana has the first state competition in the US) so hopefully i can get it working by then. im also going to reload the code and try a new controller soon so hopefully that will work. i also took off the vs=vl because thats what the manual told me to do when they said to isolate the two different power sources and thats why i switched the jumpers to get the power source the guide said. Thanks for your help so far
Vs = VL jumper should be removed because you are using a 9V battery for logic and a 6V supply for the servos
VL = EXT since you are using a battery
VS = EXT (NOT 5V)
Point 3 is very important - you are trying to power your servos via the 5V onboard voltage regulator - you are actually powering them via the 6V wall adapter (jumper should be set to VS, not 5V). This is likely the issue you are having with the servos not getting enough power.
With regard to the wrist servo, if you are saying it’s been installed correctly (i.e. set to 0 degrees before fixing the horn in place), you should not have issues with the default configuration. Remember - when you originally connect the servo horn to the bracket, the position is VERY IMPORTANT since a servo can only rotate 180 degree.
