Re: Stepper motors keep shorting… but only on one computer

Home Evil Mad Scientist Forums Egg-Bot Stepper motors keep shorting… but only on one computer Re: Stepper motors keep shorting… but only on one computer

#22426
Windell Oskay
Keymaster

Nothing in your description would suggest to me that there is any kind of “shorting” or overcurrent event going on. If there were, I’d expect it happen on either computer, and I would not expect resetting to make a difference.

Unplugging the power supply is probably unnecessary in resetting; you can probably press the RST button to reset it just as effectively.

If you can, I would suggest that you try running the two motors simultaneously from within Inkscape. If you can do that, it should rule out the possibility (which you seem to be suggesting) that the issue is that running both motors at once is causing the issue, as well as ruling out the possibility that the new computer itself is the issue.

(If you were to find that running both motors at once causes a failure, then it may be an issue of voltage droop due to pulling too much power from the power supply, which would suggest that a higher-capacity power supply is needed. This seems very unlikely as a root cause since it was working on the other computer)

What this sounds like is as though you have some kind of USB communications issue in LabView, one which is causing something to get mucked up. Amongst other possible causes, this could easily be due to the change in the LabView version. (I have encountered changes in device communication methods in other situations when changing versions of LabView.) It could also be the case that the new computer is simply _faster_, and that this is the issue. The EBB has a very limited queue for input commands and it may be necessary to add intentional delays between subsequent commands to ensure reliable communication. This, of course, depends a lot on the types of commands that you are using, and how you are using them.