Has anyone noticed significant deadband on their steering wheel? I think a human operator naturally learns and adjusts for the deadband but the steering motor wastes too much time traveling through the deadband each time it reverses. I don’t know how you’d over come it without some sort of encoder.
I’ve come to the conclusion now that it’s not the combines steering system that has deadband but rather my WAS. It has a built-in spring to limit slop but it’s a used Autofarm sensor so might be worn out. I think we’ll try a different sensor first but if that fails, how would you compensate with software on the Arduino?
How does the “deadband” show ?
You could check WAS by turning wheel manually and watch if Actual steer point change, immediately or after some travel of steering wheel when changing steering direction.
Maybe it is lag in the system (AOG to arduino and back to AOG) if your problem is oscillating steering.
If I use the autosteer chart, turn in one direction until the sensor reading starts to change, then stop, then resume in the same direction, the reading immediately continues with almost no perceivable delay. Then I reverse direction, the sensor reading does not change for about 1/5 of a steering wheel turn. I can repeat the same test with the same results in the opposite direction.
At first, while manually steering on the field, I thought it was the combine’s steering system that had mechanical backlash somewhere but steering manually while driving road speed, there is pretty much no backlash.
At first I also just roughly tuned the WAS center position, then I tried to fine tune it later and I noticed that the center seemed to also wander, that was because if the backlash.
I had the same problem on the CLAAS Ares that I managed to finish yesterday. It has axle suspension on rockers, the factory sensor is driven by a thin link that goes into a ball joint. It was ended with an M6 hexagon which had worn out. I welded it MIG and sanded it and it works! As there was play, the wheels flew from left to right.
My WAS was no good, we built our own with a potentiometer and now it’s very solid. There is no backlash in the actual steering system.