I am an adult mentor for FRC Team 1553. I am having trouble getting motors to run using the example codes that are part of LabVIEW. We have used LabVIEW for the past several years without anyu problems. We have installed LabVIEW and the three updates (LabVIEW, Utilities, Driver Station.) When I open an example VI, such as simple motor control, I cannot get it to run a motor. We are using a Victor connected to PWM output 1. We are using this years image. We have the NI9403 module in slot 2 of the 8 slot cRIO and a NI9201 module in slot 1. The imaging tool recognizes both of these devices and shows no errors.
We opened the simple motor control example VI and changed the IP address to be for our robot number (10.15.53.2). We can run the VI. Motor won't run by changing the Control that is part of the Front Panel of the VI. I have added a digital input to the VI and wired a switch into that input. We can see that input change state on the Front Panel when we operate the switch with the VI running. I can wire an encoder to other DIs and see encoder work properly on the Front Panel. I can wire a gyroscope to the analog card and see that operate properly on the VI. I added each of these to the simple motor control VI. I added a Motor Get Output VI to the motor line in the code and created an indicator for the Front Panel. We can see the indicating speed change on the Front Panel when we change the speed with the Control on the Front Panel. So, I can see digital inputs, analog inputs, and speed changes. But no motor run.
I made a new FRC cRIO Robot Project with this year's code. I added the motor open and reference to the Begin, added a fixed motor speed of 1.0 in the Periodic Task, and added motor close in the Finish. The Digital Modele and PWM reference were set the same as was done in the simple motor control VI. Running the new robot project on the cRIO and starting the Driver Station software (with Teleop enabled) allowed the motor to run. No hardware was changed between the simple motor control VI above the the new Robot project.
Is there any reason why a motor will not run in an example VI (when other things like digital inputs do work on the same digital input board) but do run in a new cRIO project?
We did have multiple versions of LabVIEW on the computer we are using. When this problem started we removed all versions of LabVIEW and then reinstalled this year's version and all the updates. We even switched all the hardware (NI9403 module, DB37 cable, Digital Side Car) to see if any of those were the problems. None of the hardware was an issue as the motor control works fine in the new Project.
Before removing the old LabVIEW software we reimaged the cRIO to v28 and moved the NI9403 module to slot 4 in the cRIO. We downloaded last year's robot project to the cRIO. Motor control worked fine.
Any suggestions would be welcome as we'd rather not have to use the full Project code just to do a simple test of something.
I have added a simplified version of our simple motor control example. It shows the digital input that was added. The input changes state on the Front Panel when the VI is run and the switch operated to the input is operated.
Paul Sullivan
