Need some help... Sim not playing nice..

Bear with me... this will be a long post as I want to convey all the testing I have done to narrow it down.

No matter which game I play, my left motor always ends up with a Motor Drive Error (MDE).
In AC it can be as soon as the first corner at Nords, sometimes just as go past the pits area.
Anyway, my point is. My sim is currently unusable until I get to the bottom of this, and it's driving me mad!

Testing I have done:
Played with PID - No difference.
Reduced the Arc - No difference.

In the JRK Util I can fang the input slider all over the place and not once can I induce an MDE.

So.. I swapped Power Supplies, so my Right Supply was feeding the left motor. Still MDE.

Then I swapped out the JRK and set up a new JRK from scratch. Still MDE.
(Have a new JRK that will be heave/sway - not decided yet!)

You spotting a pattern? The only constant is the same motor...

To test, I put a smaller Power Supply on my Sim feeding the left motor and in AC on the corner where I get the MDE, the smaller supply tripped and powered off.

So, it's fair to say that for some reason my left motor is now drawing silly AMP's, but I don't understand why.
The right motor/JRK will run all day without issues.

How come in the JRK util I can't get an MDE no matter how much I wiggle the input slider?!?
As soon as I fire up a game... Left JRK reports an MDE.

Is there any sure fire way to determine what Amp's the Left motor is drawing in comparison with the Right?

All advice, very welcome Thank you!

Have you swapped the pots from one side to the other? Also, make sure that the pot of the motor in question does move exactly with the axle. The reason I'm saying this is that I had a very similar issue and found that the pot on one motor did have a tiny bit of play (meaning the axle would start to turn and the pot would only turn a fraction later). That was enough to cause problems.

Yes, sorry. Forget to mention. the Pot was changed as well. New never before used Pot and all good from a feedback point of view.
Also, in the JRK util the Pot is staying well within it's feedback range.

(I did have some feedback disconnect issues that I fixed, but not on this motor.)

Seems my left hand motor has started pulling crazy AMP's and I can't work out why, or how to go about testing it.....

Oh, and again for Clarity, I'm going to test my motor using a multimeter to check what the AMP draw is. I am more looking for a way to work out why it's only having issues once in game.

Using the JRK util I can't induce an MDE. (I can sit on the sim and throw myself all over the place) So I'm really keen to understand why the Plugins / Simtools seem to be generating this error from the JRK.

Yes - It's repeatable, so I will make a video. I go away this weekend for two weeks so will likely be after that, so my apologies when I revive a seemingly dead thread then

Try a car battery as power and see if that helps.
Oddly enough, a stuffed power supply can do all sorts of weird things, over voltage, spikes in current, under voltage, drops in current.......

I know you said you never get the errors in jrk config, only in simtools etc but can you post your jrk config and simtools settings? I had issues like that awhile back, but I did replace my HP server psu's as they helped cause the issues

Thanks Guys.

I'm actually thinking along the same lines and I may have one dud-ish Power supply and one on the way out. I managed to get hold a HP-700 67A PSU from work and tested with that, and I could certainly get further into Nords on AC before I got the error again. So to try and rule Power issues (household and PSU) out I'm just going to bite the bullet and get rid of the HP PSU and install the Monster 2000W IBM edgeserver PSU. To that end, I ordered two of these puppies today: (Forums report one of these can run two JRK's and motors up to 500W each!!)

They are 15AMP so need the special Earth pin, but I'm just going to run on standard mains at 10A and wire them to work with a standard plug. We have heaps of the 15A connectors at work.

Once they arrive (about 2 weeks) I'll re do everything and report back what I discover.
I will reset my JRK's and also build a profile for AC from the ground up.
Start off all fresh again.

The only good thing from all this frustration is I now have a much better understanding of PID.

@Archie , did you try a car battery?

@Archie - Didn't you mention you had swapped the psu's from one side to the other and still got the error on the same jrk/motor? Or did I read that wrong? So unless you have 2 dodgy power supplies the problem might still be there with a new psu. Have you checked all the cables and connections to make sure you don't have a high resistance join somewhere?

Also, what about turning all the forces in Simtools off and only turning one on at the time to figure out which force is causing the error. It might just be the case of turning some values down in the tuning center or limiting that axis...

Hi Gents,

We are all thinking along the same lines, I like it This is what I did today to try and narrow it down.

Reset both JRK's to Factory default, set up the Feedback again on both of them.
Replaced both Power Supplies with "borrowed" HP-700's

Fired up Simtools and used AC as my test program.

Turned off all the axis and went through them all, one by one.
Pitch. Tuned OK and at 20% - OK
Roll. Tuned OK and at 20% - OK
Sway. Tuned OK and at 25% - OK
Heave. Tuned OK and at 10% - OK.
Surge. Tuned OK and at 20% - Motor Driver Error!!

With all other forces switch off and only Surge engaged, and only at 20% with a well tuned profile I am getting an MDE.
Always the same motor and always under surge. I accelerate, all good. Hit the brakes... MDE.
.
If I drop the P to 0.2 then the MDE goes away, but the Sim feels rubbish as the movement is not sharp enough.

It's driving me bonkers. I don't even have a high P value. (0.35) Ignore the D value I have in the video below, I was testing between 0.35 and 0.7 with no difference to the MDE.

Here is the Video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UVNikjcBjCSGdBb0RPd245SVU/view?usp=sharing (Sorry, it's full HD so quite large to capture all the windows)

What do you think?

Did you try with a car battery on it?

I don't have car battery to hand Dave With two new Power Supplies, I'm struggling to see a correlation with Power in this instance??

I can't quite remember what the Integral Limit setting does but from memory, mine is set to 2000 instead of the 10000 you have. Might be worth checking out.

I think that only comes into play if you actually use the I value, it stops Integral Wind-up and resets the I value at the threshold you specify.

Set intergal at 10000. Leave I at 0
Car battery handles back current better than psu. Hence if you had one handy , you could check.
Oh and set , I think its bits per second to 1024 up from 128. Im not near my puter so I double check a bit later.

Thanks @noorbeast - I'll check that out. However I think the MDE is happening before the Feedback issues. When I get the MDE the motor jiggles and dies (the run/stop motor flicking you see) and then my motor arms falls all the way to down, sending feedback to 0. A quick press of the Emergency Power switch brings the Motor / JRK back into life, until it happens again.

You will notice in the video, the JRK reports "No Power" while hit and then reset the Emergency switch.

Interestingly, an Analogue sample of 1024 makes the "PID Period exceeded" go to Yes. Is that something I can ignore or is another setting wrong somewhere?

Really appreciate all the feedback guys. Keeps me from setting fire to the damn thing