I'm looking for advice. I pulled my Mindstorms 8547 kit out of storage and started to play with it after several years of inactivity.
I found that the Color Sensor, the Ultra Sonic Sensor, and the position read back on motors all do not function. I downloaded the latest software and firmware version 1.31.
Any idea what is going on? Do I need to go back to a previous firmware version to get things to work as they did originally?
Any advice is appreciated, thank you.
Check for 5V on the two middle pins of the motor connectors (plug a cable into the brick, no motor on the other end, and measure volatege on the contacts of the open other end). NXT/EV3 have separate power to all the sensors, if there's a short (failed capacitor or similar) or the power chip failed then the brick will still work, but the sensors won't get power.
This honestly just sounds like a faulty cable. See the NXT cable pinout below. If wire 5 or 6 is damaged it will cause digital I2C sensors to fail. This includes the color and ultrasonic sensors, but not the (analog) touch sensors.
Also, according to this source, pin 5 and 6 are also used for the motor encoders. So damage to 5 or 6 will cause rotation feedback to fail.
This sounds exactly like the issues you are having. The solution? Try a different cable to confirm that the issue is a faulty wire, then (optionally) buy new cables from here.
