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[on:]

Okay, I have been tearing my hair out trying to get this project to work for a little over a week.  I am working on an Uno, using the 0022 IDE and drivers in Vista and 7.  I thought it best to put it here because of what it's doing.

I have been trying (and failing) to get my board to play nice with an Adafruit motor shield.  This is supposed to be the driving force (no pun intended) behind a robot that I am trying to build.  I can get one if/else statement to behave beautifully, but if I add anything more than that, and it ignores the conditions of every one but the first, resulting in a ton of garbage coming out (I have been trying to debug it one loop at a time, .  The directional input was originally supposed to be given by means of five momentary switches for simplicity's sake.  I have tried separate if/else statements, if/else if, switch/case arguments, switching pins, and quite frankly I'm at a loss as to what could be going wrong.  The motor that I'm using to test the code is a vibration motor salvaged from an off-branded Nintendo Gamecube controller.

I'll upload the code in a little bit, once I get on to my other computer.

[Reply #1 on:]

Here is the latest attempt at the code.

/*
 * most successful attempt yet, out of 5 tries
 */
#include <AFMotor.h>

AF_DCMotor motor1(1);
//AF_DCMotor motor2(2);

void setup()
{
  pinMode(2,INPUT);
  pinMode(5,INPUT);
  pinMode(6,INPUT);
  pinMode(9,INPUT);
  pinMode(10,INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  motor1.setSpeed(100);
  Serial.println("Motor 1 initialized");
  //motor2.setSpeed(200);
  //Serial.println("Motor 2 initialized");
 
}
void loop()
{
  int forward=digitalRead(2),back=digitalRead(5),left=digitalRead(6),right=digitalRead(9),power=digitalRead(10);
  if(power!=LOW)
  {
    motor1.run(RELEASE);
    //motor2.run(RELEASE);
  }
 
   else if(power==LOW)
  {
    /*if(forward==LOW)
    {
      //Serial.println("Moving forward...");
      motor1.run(FORWARD);
   // motor2.run(FORWARD);
    }
    /*else
    {
      motor1.run(RELEASE);
      //motor2.run(RELEASE);
      Serial.println("Stopping...");
    }*/
    /*else*/ if(back==LOW)
    {
      motor1.run(BACKWARD);
    }
    else
    {
      motor1.run(BRAKE);
    }
  }
  else
  {
  motor1.run(RELEASE);
  }
}

[Reply #2 on:]

For a start, omitting the commented-out code it looks like this:

Code:

  if(power!=LOW)
  {
    motor1.run(RELEASE);
  }

  else if(power==LOW)
  {
    // testing back
  }
  else
  {
    motor1.run(RELEASE);
  }

You have 3 cases here which don't make sense at all:

• If power is not low
• If power is low
• Some third case (power is neither low, nor not low) - this will never happen

I would start by reworking that along these lines:

Code:

  if (power != LOW)
  {
    motor1.run(RELEASE);
  }

// here if power is low
  else
  {
    if (back==LOW)
     {
      motor1.run(BACKWARD);
     }
    else
     {
      motor1.run(BRAKE);
     }
  }  // end power low
 

[Reply #3 on:]

Gave that a try; no dice.  Tried changing pins and switches, as well.  It works fine if I'm checking the values for going forward, but for some reason it is being unnecessarily obtuse when I try to go backward.

I looked at the circuit, and I noticed that if I touched a voltmeter to pin 5, the motor started behaving.  Damnedest thing.  I still haven't begun to figure out how to use that to my advantage.

Edit:  Screw it - I think one of my last experiments may have blown some of the pins.  I already had another Uno coming for a different project, so I'm going to try it with some virgin hardware.

[Reply #4 on:]

Okay, it's something with the board, but not with the ATMega chip.  Fired up the new board, and it presented the same symptoms, so I poked around with the code.

My code calls for digital pins 2,5,6,9,and 10 to be initialized as inputs.  I tried changing the pin that turned the motor on, and discovered that pins 2 and 10 are the only ones that actually behave.  I have no idea how to proceed further.

[Reply #5 on:]

You are using motor 1,  right?

Code:

AF_DCMotor motor1(1);

As I read the code, motor 1 uses pins 2 and 3:

Code:

#define MOTOR1_A 2
#define MOTOR1_B 3

But you make pin 2 an input:

Code:

pinMode(2,INPUT);

I'm no expert on motor drivers, but won't that be a conflict?

[Reply #6 on:]

Actually, that is the input that I actually can make work, so I'm not entirely sure it's a conflict.  I'm checking now against the list on the Adafruit forums, but I believe that pin is not used.

Okay, so pin 2 isn't used, but pins 5 and 6, which are both supposed to be used for input, are supposed to be used for motors 3 and 4, which aren't used.  I'm wondering if that could cause some kind of funky interference?

[Reply #7 on:]

Okay, I have found one way to fix my problem (going to try turning on the internal pull-up resistors later on in hopes that will solve the original problem) - I just connected the input from pin 5 to pin A0, and added the following line:

Code:

back=analogRead(A0);

Suddenly, it works now.  It needs some debouncing, if my diagnosing skills are correct, but it works.

Thanks to everyone that tried to help.