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thanks @cyborg-x1,

This was just the hint I needed. I had 2 USB serial devices and some times during development one, more or both might be plugged in at the same time meaning the /dev/ttyUSBx would change. At the point of confusion my motor controller was pointing at the rplidar vs the motor controller.

I solved this my making udev rules to mapp the actual hardware to /dev/lidar and /dev/motor_controller

(posted for others reference who might hit this same type of problem)