PiBorg Troubleshooting

Submitted by ryan_scott on Thu, 10/29/2015 - 14:15

Forums:

I can not figure out why the Diddyborg is not working. I got the robot to move for about a twenty minute period of time, before I decided it was good, and left it (without changing it). Two days later, I came back, and turned it on. It paired with Bluetooth PS3 Dualshock controller just fine, but when I pressed the buttons on the PS3 controller, it didn't work. On the bottom of the robot, on the (what I believe is the) motor control, a red light blinks on and off, twice every second. When I drove it around two days before, this red light was not blinking.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone could help me troubleshoot! Thanks in advance.

piborg's picture

piborg

Fri, 10/30/2015 - 12:02

It sounds like the PS3 controller is no longer connecting with the DiddyBorg.
The red LED blinks to let you know it is ready to go but the controller is not yet connected.

There are three likely causes for this problem:

  1. The PS3 controller is no longer paired to the Bluetooth dongle
    If this is the case you can do the pairing again and everything should work normally
    This can be caused by:
    • Connecting the PS3 controller to the PS3 itself
    • Pairing the PS3 controller with another device
    • Changing the Bluetooth dongle
    • Changing the PS3 controller
  2. The PS3 controller needs to be charged.
    We have had a couple of occasions where we needed to leave the controller plugged in to a PC USB port overnight to charge because it had stopped working.
    Note that the controller may not charge if attached to a mobile phone style wall charger.
    Also if you charge the controller using the PS3 USB ports you will probably need to pair the controller with the DiddyBorg again afterwards.
  3. You have the PS3 controller attached with a USB cable.
    As strange as this sounds the controller may not work when attached via the USB cable.

Hopefully one of the above is the problem, if so it should be easily fixed.

ryan_scott

Tue, 11/03/2015 - 15:03

Thank you for the help, unfortunately, I just tried repairing the PS3 controller to the pi, and it still doesn't work. It appears that the PS3 controller pairs and connects because the 1 player light comes on on the controller, and as soon as I connect it to the pi, the red light starts blinking on and off again.
Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

piborg's picture

piborg

Thu, 11/05/2015 - 14:02

Well that is a little strange.

If you could try the following and tell us the results it may help track the problem down

  1. Start by ending any running scripts using sudo killall python in a terminal
  2. When you run sudo ./sixpair what output do you see on the terminal?
  3. What does running sudo sixad --start show on the terminal?
  4. When you turn the PS3 controller on at this stage is anything displayed on the terminal?
  5. What does running ls -l /dev/input show on the terminal?
  6. Finally does running sudo jstest / dev/input/js0 work?
    If it does you should have a screen full of numbers which change if you move the joysticks around
piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 11/16/2015 - 18:00

We had a strange problem with DiddyBorg Red Edition and the Raspberry Pi v2.

It seems that the existing software for the Raspberry Pi did not always work at startup.
I believe the problem is due to sixad starting before the bluetooth / USB is ready.

We have modified the scripts to delay starting sixad, not just the Python script.
It seems to work reliably now, the scripts have been updated on our website.

To get the new versions of the scripts you can simply re-download the code as follows.

DiddyBorg:

rm -rf ~/diddyborg
bash <(curl https://www.piborg.org/install-diddyborg.txt)

Metal Edition:

rm -rf ~/metalborg
bash <(curl https://www.piborg.org/install-metalborg.txt)

After updating you should be able to reboot the Raspberry Pi and hopefully the PS3 controller will starting working again.

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