Yay, another charging issue discussion

[balmerjd]

So I’ve only just recently started using my Yarbo (like a couple of days) as other things in my life have prevented me from doing anything with it until now, but I think I may have an issue with charging. If I manually drive the rover on to the dock and initiate charging, it seems to work just fine. I’ve done this a number of times now. But for the first time, yesterday I hit the recharge button on the virtual controller and let HAL 9000 do it on its own. It navigated over to the dock, lined itself up, and pulled right on the center of the pad. Stopped half way to the back for about a second and slowly backed up the rest the way! Yay!…..

But then after about 1–2 seconds it pulled halfway forward, did a shimmy, and backed up all the way again… but was now about 1 inch to the right if you’re looking at the dock with the rover facing you…. Then it did it again and now was 2-3 inches off center had its left track partially hanging over the edge…. And then proceeded to start charging…. I guess? It took from around 3PM until 10PM that night to go from 16% to 67%, and then I noticed that it was cycling.. like the main screen in the app would go to charging for about 1-2 seconds, to normal like it wasn’t connected for 2-4 seconds and repeat… I thought maybe the weird alignment might be the issue and so, through the app, I stopped charging, drove HAL9000 off the dock, and hit the recharge button on the virtual controller. I then proceeded to watch it (in app) try to align itself on the dock several times and fail to do so. After 3-5 attempts I gave up and let it sit in the yard. (It was late and I was already in bed )

First thing this morning I go out, sure enough it’s like 3 inches off center with the track hanging over the edge. I manually drive it back to the center of the pad, tell it to start charging, and bam it works.

So I guess my question is, I’ve seen some mention of magnetic sensors for alignment. Does anyone know where they are located on the rover and if their state/output is available in the debug? i.e. if I go out this afternoon with a magnet, can I locate the magnets in the dock, and make sure the sensors in HAL9000 are working?

[bryan.wheeler]

They are not available to the debug user output, unfortunately. I’d open a ticket as this sounds like it just needs to be recalibrated. I’d get it manually perfectly centered on the dock and charging and then open the ticket.

[rcguymike]

Mine looks like it’s slightly off when docking now too, it has successfully gotten to 100% the last couple times though

[Yarbo-Forum]

Hi there, there are two small antennas located at the rear of the Yarbo core that function as the transmitters. The docking station is equipped with four magnetic sensing coils, and the alignment is based on the interaction between these components.

At the moment, the diagnostics page does not display data related to these sensors, so we’re unable to check their status there. We recommend submitting a support ticket so our technical team can assist you further.

[balmerjd]

Ok, I was planning to do some more mapping today or on Sunday so I’ll have a chance to draw the battery down a little bit and try sending HAL9000 to the charger again. If it still won’t charge, I’ll put in a ticket.

[jso]

I had 5cm misalignment issue recently. Manual docking and charging worked fine as in your case, but during automatic docking yarbo was always 5cm misaligned to the left. In my case issue was related to the pathway. Pathway was touching front right corner of the docking station (from yarbo point of view). After recreating pathway to the center of docking station alignment issue gone and no more “ReCharging Successful but failed to charge“ error.