We had our first OTOS odometry unit fail about a month ago (which Sparkfun replaced). We have been using another unit on loan from another local team and that unit appears to have failed during our qualifying tournament yesterday. We swapped the OTOS out and everything worked perfectly again. The team we borrowed one from has also had at least 2 failures also. Any idea what is going wrong? Not many teams in Indiana are using this yet, but they are now getting leery of using them based on seeing quite a few competition failures.
Did you check the power supply? Imsufficient current/voltage may create problems.
Yes, unit had power. This second failure appears to be the same issue. The unit has power and lights up, but does not output any readings. We verified cable and power.
How long is the cabling? It might be worth trying to disable the i2c pull-up resistors on the sensor and re-test
Also ensure that the pins within the port/connector are still straight (we’ve seen some with smashed pins inside
Cable is standard Sparkfun cable for the OTOS. Pins are fine. We verified those on our last failure also. Unit had been working fine for a couple of weeks leading up the competition day.
Odd - Id’ double-check that the operating voltages are within expected range and if so…I don’t have many other ideas
For another replacement head to Returns - if you learn any more about the pattern/what might be triggering the failures be sure to post a follow up here