I’m having an interesting issue with my sabertooth 2x12 motor driver. First a little background info on my project. It’s hopefully going to be an rc lawnmower for the hills around my house. I picked up a set of 24v wheel chair motors and a track set up from a snowblower. For now I’ve got motors and tracks set up on a small frame for testing. I’m using a 20v dewalt power tool battery to power it, and a simpler pistol grip rc transmitter and receiver for controls. I was able to jumper each motor to the 20v battery and check amp draw and I was getting a 7amp spike and 3amp running on each motor so I figure the 2x12 is plenty of controller for these motors.
Onto the issue. Very first time trying to use the sabertooth with everything wired up using ch1 and ch2 on receiver to signal inputs 1 and 2 on sabertooth as soon as I power on I get a hum and red error led. Lasts a few seconds and led turns off. Touching steering or throttle on transmitter activates the red led error light again. No motor movement at all.
So I disconnected both motors from the driver, no change. Tried swapping to different channels on the receiver, no change. Every time I power on error led. So I disconnect the signal wires and power on this time no error led. I connect signal wire to S1 on driver and power on, no error led. It’s only when a signal wire is hooked to S2 that I get error led on start up. It doesn’t matter what channel on the receiver or what wire harnessing use anytime S2 has a wire hooked up I get an error.
This was set in mixed mode for my controls. I switched to independent mode and as long as S2 was unhooked I could try different channels into S1 and I can control each of my motors just fine. Is this an issue inside the sabertooth? Sorry for the long winded post, but wanted to get as much info out there for you guys. Thanks for you input, Kyle.