Safety first (or somewhere in between)
During the last few weeks a new motor-controller software was implemented and tested.
The new motor-controller software detects when something is preventing the rods from moving, ie. when the remains of a child’s hand has gotten caught in the mechanics. Rather than continuing the molesting, the rod stops after 0.2 seconds of stalling.
This is also relevant if the rods should move too far sideways. Instead of a circuit burn off, the doubling of current happens for 0.2 seconds, before the board cuts the power. The following video demonstrates rod sideways movement and in the end a sidecrash. The LED indicates the power has been cut.
This also happends should the ball get stuck between a shooting man and the floor:
This has been implemented in the following way:
If the rod hasn’t moved for 0.2 seconds and the wanted position isn’t the current position, go into emergency stall mode.
This emergency stall mode has to be exited by a hard reset or a soft reset sent by the server controlling the motor-controller boards, before the motor-controller responds to any set position calls.