Installation Issues

piborg's picture
Submitted by piborg on Fri, 02/22/2013 - 09:57

Forums:

Post here for queries regarding setup problems.
We recommend you try using the troubleshooting instructions here first if you have not already.
Please try to list as much about the problem as you can (OS distribution, motor type(s), versions et cetera), the more we know the easier it is to help :)

imixman@hotmail.com

Thu, 11/19/2015 - 18:43

Thanks a load, I didn't even notice that reply. Thank you :)

imixman@hotmail.com

Thu, 11/19/2015 - 19:43

Since I finally got it all to work, I noticed that 4 motors don't run consequently due to the batteries being only a pack of 2, so only 2 consequent motors would work, if I twist more battery connectors in, would that work?

piborg's picture

piborg

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 10:50

I presume you mean that when you try and move more than two motors they all stop working.
If that is the case then using more batteries may help.

What you want to do is connect a second battery pack in parallel.
This means that both of the battery packs are connected the same way to the PicoBorg:

  • + / red from both battery packs goes to V+
  • - / black from both battery packs goes to GND

Connecting the battery packs in parallel will provide the same voltage, but double the amount of current the batteries can supply.
This means there will be twice as much power to run the motors with.

It is also worth checking the batteries are fully charged.
As batteries use up their charge the amount of power they can deliver drops.
The more work they have to do the worse this effect becomes.

imixman@hotmail.com

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 13:23

I connected x8 batteries (x4 AA battery holders), I guess it works fine now. (I also wrote my own script to operate the motors via LAN yesterday)

imixman@hotmail.com

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 13:24

Joyborg doesn't work for Debian Jessie, only Wheezy since some of the packages aren't available for Jessie. If you don't mind, can you post a tutorial for Jessie?

piborg's picture

piborg

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 17:46

Unfortunately we have not really had a chance to look at Jessie yet.
The last couple of months have been spent working on our two new robot kits we recently released.

We will get around to looking at our scripts with Jessie in the near future.
Having said that given the number of products we have to test it may be a while before they are all checked.

Which packages are missing for the JoyBorg script?

imixman@hotmail.com

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 18:52

bluez-utils and bluez-compat

piborg's picture

piborg

Sat, 11/21/2015 - 23:04

It sounds like you are stuck on getting the PS3 controller to work using Bluetooth.
I have done a bit of digging and it seems the Bluetooth packages have changed a little in Jessie.

I do not have a Raspberry Pi with Jessie installed to try this myself, but there is an alternative set of packages that may work with Jessie.

Try these apt-get lines instead of the originals:

sudo apt-get -y install bluez-hcidump checkinstall libusb-dev libbluetooth-dev 
sudo apt-get -y install joystick libusb-1.0-0-dev bluez pyqt4-dev-tools

If that works let us know and we will update our PS3 guide so that it covers Jessie as well.

craig_johns

Wed, 04/20/2016 - 21:44

Hi,
Bought two of these and think I have them working how I would like (mostly!). They are pretty great!
Of interest, I can't see a maximum voltage/current advice on these? What would you run the motors on as a maximum?
Craig

piborg's picture

piborg

Thu, 04/21/2016 - 10:33

The absolute maximums for running the PicoBorg are:

  • 20 V power input
  • 2 A shared between the motors (stall currents)

The board has a 2 A fuse so too much draw will cause the fuse to blow.

We do not recommend running at the absolute maximum as 'spikes' from the motors will likely take the board beyond its limits.
Our recommended limits are:

  • 12 V power input
  • 1 A continuous draw shared between the motors

craig_johns

Thu, 04/21/2016 - 21:58

Thanks, as ever!
Craig

craig_johns

Fri, 04/22/2016 - 21:25

Hi,
My picoborg motor 3 appears to be permanently switched on. I can't seem to turn it off!
Any ideas?
Craig

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 04/25/2016 - 10:30

The first thing to check is if there are any other scripts / programs controlling that GPIO pin.

The pin that motor 3 is connected to is GPIO 8, this is pin #24 on the GPIO header:
http://pinout.xyz/pinout/pin24_gpio8

Other devices which use either general GPIO or the SPI port might be using this pin.
Alternatively any scripts / programs which control PicoBorg may set this pin.

I would recommend you try ending any running Python scripts using sudo killall python, then see if the GUI can control motor 3.
If that fixes it you may have a script loading at startup which is controlling that pin.

craig_johns

Fri, 04/29/2016 - 22:39

Not having the desired effect!
Now only motor 1 can be toggled on/off using 4dc.py programme.
Think the board may be an issue?
Don't think there are any programmes running at start-up...
Regards,

piborg's picture

piborg

Sat, 04/30/2016 - 15:41

It seems rather unlikely, normally a fault with the board would not be changing this much.

Do you have any way of checking what the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi are actually doing?
A multimeter or some LEDs and resistors would be sufficient.

craig_johns

Mon, 05/02/2016 - 21:59

Thanks for your help!
Using multimeter after start up looks like (BCM) GP 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14 & 15 are putting out some current.
Regards,
Craig

piborg's picture

piborg

Tue, 05/03/2016 - 12:01

The first thing we want to do is check what the GPIO pins are doing on their own.

Start by remove the PicoBorg and any other items attached to the GPIO header so that we measure just the GPIO pins themselves.

Next put the multimeter into voltage mode so we can see what power is coming out of the pins.

Load up python by opening a terminal window and use the command: python

Go through the python commands below one at a time.
After each GPIO.output command measure the voltage between the corresponding BCM pin and a GND pin.

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)

GPIO.setup(4, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(18, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(8, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(7, GPIO.OUT)

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.LOW)

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.HIGH)
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.HIGH)
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.HIGH)
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.HIGH)

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.LOW)

If you could then reply with the voltages of each GPIO pin we can then confirm if the Raspberry Pi is behaving as expected.

craig_johns

Mon, 05/23/2016 - 20:24

Hi, Sorry for the late reply:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)

GPIO.setup(4, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(18, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(8, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(7, GPIO.OUT)

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.LOW) - 0.01
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.LOW) - 0.01
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.LOW) - 0.00
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.LOW) - 0.04

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.HIGH) - 3.20
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.HIGH) - 0.03
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.HIGH) - 0.00
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.HIGH) - 0.08

GPIO.output(4, GPIO.LOW) - 0.01
GPIO.output(18, GPIO.LOW) - 0.01
GPIO.output(8, GPIO.LOW) - 0.00
GPIO.output(7, GPIO.LOW) - 0.04

Hope this helps somewhat! Is 18 bust?
Regards,
Craig

piborg's picture

piborg

Tue, 05/24/2016 - 10:36

All four pins should have really read around the 3.3 mark on the high outputs.
It seems pins 18, 8, and 7 all failed to actually go high.

I can only really see two possibilities here given we are only driving the GPIO pins with no hardware connected:

  1. There is some other piece of software controlling the GPIO pins as well
  2. The GPIO pins are not working correctly

I would suggest creating a new SD card with only the bare minimum installed:

If you now get all four pins reading around 3 at the GPIO.HIGH lines then it was a software problem.
If not there is probably something wrong with the Raspberry Pi itself.

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