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Troubleshooting Exercise 5A - Motor Basics
By Silas Clark October 26, 2022 - 7:41pm Comments (4)
Hello,
I'm having some issues with my exercise 5A where the motor doesn't move at all regardless of the switch position. I read a couple of other peoples blogs about this and they seem to have had issues to, but never shared a solution. One other student noted that our switch has 3 setttings instead of 2 like in the book, so perhaps that could be the problem? Does anybody have any advice as for how to move forward with this circuit?
Thanks,
Silas
Comments
The only advice I can offer at the moment would be to check all the wires thoroughtly. Most important is that the perfboard doesn't always make a connection even though it looks like it should (i.e. wire seems firmly seated in hole).
Often if I've tried several things with no joy I on a simple circuit I will just pull it apart and start again from scratch. I don't know why, but that often helps.
Sorry I can't offer much more on this one.
I had an issue where I did not read the instructions properly for this excersise where you need to open the Serial monitor (Tools, Serial Monitor) Ctrl_Shift+ M and you need to enter the speed value for the motors. That along with the switch on will move the motors. Just double check that. I wasted a couple of hours on that silly mistake and even bought new motor boards thinking it was faulty. Hope that solves your issues.
It took me a while to figure out about this exercise too. Make sure your robot is connected to the system. You need to open serial port by clicking on tools from the top-bar. Then write the command like
f 50
then press Ctrl+Enter to execute.
I hope this helps.
This is an old post, but if anyone else has problems with 5A and it doesn't have to do with the serial monitor, make sure your motor driver is placed fully into the breadboard. Usually other parts from the kit don't need to be pushed in all the way, but the motor driver needs to be firmly placed. That was my issue for the motor not moving.