My robot was driving merrily along, doing its toy-picking-up things, when all of a sudden it was doing circles — one of the motors had cut out. Strange, I thought. The red LED on the Pi was off, indicating an undervoltage, so I figured that it had merely run out of juice. But the battery-voltage indicator lights were saying it was at a reasonable charge…
I took an EV3 P-Brick stuffed full o' fresh batteries and tried running the motor. Nothing happenned…
I had been running the motors at 100% power prior to this mysterious occurrence. It was my first time doing so. While this is safe with the EV3 P-Brick, the BrickPi provides more power to the motors. Then I realised — I had burned 🔥 the motor. With only a couple of weeks to go before the competition.
My mind immediately turned to buying a new one… and it’s 50 Australian dollars (they’re on sale), and will arrive uncomfortably close to the competition deadline. No-can-do.
So I set about to build a one-motor design, which I’ll talk about in my next post.