14. Troubleshooting

Contours cannot find any motors

• Confirm every motor is powered and physically connected.

• Open Connections › Manage Connections and click Refresh.

• For Ethernet motors, confirm they are on the same subnet as your PC.

• For serial motors, confirm the correct COM port is available and not being held by another program.

An axis will not connect

• Confirm a motor is actually linked to the axis — right-click the axis to check.

• Try Disconnect then Connect again.

• If the motor appeared before but no longer does, cycle power on the motor and refresh connections.

An axis property is greyed out

Some properties are read-only while the motor is connected. Disconnect the axis, make the change, and reconnect.

My recording looks noisy or jagged

• Open the Record Edit view and apply a smoothing filter. Start with a gain around 0.1.

• Re-record with a larger interval if the noise is genuinely sample-to-sample jitter.

• Check that the motor's maximum speed and torque are reasonable — aggressive limits can cause mechanical chatter.

Playback is too fast or too slow

Open the Record Edit view and change the Interval value. Larger intervals play the same data back more slowly; smaller intervals speed things up.

Imported CSV data does not appear

• Confirm the file has at least two data rows and that the first column is time in seconds.

• Confirm time values are not all the same — Contours rejects zero-interval data.

• In the chart's Fixed-Interval Sample panel, enable Show so the trace is visible.

The joystick is not being detected

• Plug the joystick in before launching Contours.

• Open Project › User Settings and select your joystick from the list.

• Confirm the status bar shows Joystick Acquired: <name>.