Blinking red light, z axis work but no retract or extend works

Troubleshooting
1

Morning,

I set my maslow4 up, got it calibrated and working.
then a belt slipped off and got chewed up by the gears.

i took it all apart, fixed it but i believe the cable is pretty mangled(i’ll have to get a replacement)
but at first when i put it together, i kept getting an error and realized the arms were put in reverse (mixed the diagram up) so when i tried i got an error. realized my mistake and re-assembled

now the top board has a flashing red light. the z axis works but i cant retract or extend any of the cables. Not receiving any errors just says retracting and sits there. when i hit extend, nothing but to hit retract first.

Any suggestions?
Im updated the firmware and everything.
Thanks

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2

I had a similar problem recently. Check the connections of all your Ethernet cables.

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3

Thanks! figured out the cables were being weird so i checked them and all of a sudden she was working.

Now to get it set up and start cutting

Thanks!

2 Likes
4

Aloha,

I just installed the JST-XH encoders, cables, and controller board—my previous setup was starting to throw errors—and now I have flashing red lights and can’t retract.

@bar , can you suggest what’s going on? I’m using firmware v0.84.

Here’s the serial output:

Maslow-serial 20240928.log (2.2 KB)

Mahalo,

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5

Do you see any information printed out in the console? It should explain there what error is triggering the red light

6

Aloha Bar,

Is the console separate from the serial?

I’ll happily look…

Mahalo,

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7

I would expect to see some information printed out here:

image
image1328×956 77.1 KB

It could also be a good idea to try running the system test here:

image
image3012×1396 290 KB

That should also tell us what is going on.

8

This is what I’m finding from TEST:

[MSG:WARN: Encoder read failure on Bottom Right]
[MSG:WARN: Encoder not found on Bottom Right]
[MSG:INFO: Magnet detected on Bottom Right]
[MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Bottom Right]

I swapped the cables from Bottom Left and Bottom Right and the error remained on Bottom Right, so not a cable. sigh

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9

Good testing.

What happens if you plug the cable from that encoder board into a different port on the main controller board?

That would tell us if it’s an encoder thing or a controller board thing with that port.

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10

I thought of that while I was getting a cup of coffee, and just did it. Swapped the cables at the board from bottom right to top right and vice versa, and the problem shifted to Top Right:

[MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Top Right]

Implicates the controller, no?

Mahalo,

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11

I think that implicates the encoder board since the issue moves with the encoder board. I’ll DM you a code for a replacement right now, but that is for sure something that we will want to keep an eye on to make sure it’s not common for them to fail.

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12

That’s what happens when an old Navy ET is 30 years away from electronics…I did the right things to isolate the fault, but drew the wrong conclusion. Doh!

Good to knock the rust off!

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