Testing Breakout, Mounting Compressor

I haven’t had much time to work the last couple days, but I did accomplish some things. I had already connected everything to the cRIO breakout except for the power connections, so I went to test everything using Chad’s ROS diagnostic messages. At first, I couldn’t get the ROS node to communicate with the cRIO. Then, I realized that the cRIO was not turned on. I turned on the cRIO and got messages from the cRIO, but all of the voltage measurements were reading 0. I connected the 13.8v power to the breakout board (duh), and it read good, but I was getting nothing from the encoders. I realized that this was because my 5v rail was at 0v. I had previously bench-tested the 5v rail, so this struck me as odd. I pulled out the cRIO breakout board and retested it. The 5v rail still worked when bench-testing. I soon isolated the problem to the gyro board. When it’s connected, the 5v rail shorts to ground. When disconnected, the 5v rail is fine. I will have to look into the cause of this problem. I suspect I may have messed up the pinout on the connector to the gyro board.

With the gyro board disconnected, I was able to get good readings on all of the power rails. I need to recheck these and also check that the encoders work now that I have a good 5v rail (I had to disconnect all of the encoders.

I also mounted the compressor with the rubber feet I ordered from McMaster. I’m running it through an Innovation First Spike relay, the coil of which is being switched by a pressure switch in the pneumatic system. The compressor will turn on when the pressure dips low and turn off when the pressure exceeds ~120 PSI. I still need to connect the pressure switch to the relay (with a pull down). I also need to mount the accumulators and connect them to the compressor and solenoid valve. I have already mounted the solenoid valve, but need to wire it. I’m not yet sure how I will control the solenoid valve. In order to avoid having to make a new FPGA image for the cRIO, I will probably use either the IRC5’s GPIO or something simple like an Arduino or FTDI chip.