Need Help With 2009 Control System

[professorX]

Hello everyone, I'm having troubles running a motor control example that is provided by LabView.

Everyone seems to be connected properly, the lights on the power distribution block, speed controller, cRIO and the digital sidecar are on.

The light on the speed controller seems to be flashing orange, so that means that the speed controller is not getting any information (?)

I have formatted the driver station and the cRIO successfully with update 2.

The program downloaded successfully also. The program that I downloaded is Motor Control Example. When I run the program and change the speed, the lights on the speed controller does not change. I have tried several things like switching from autonomous to teleoperated and rebooting everything.

I uploaded some pictures of the current control system and how everything is connected.

Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this problem?

http://i398.photobucket.com/albums/pp63/xavier10460/IMG_2943.jpg

http://i398.photobucket.com/albums/pp63/xavier10460/IMG_2939.jpg

http://i398.photobucket.com/albums/pp63/xavier10460/IMG_2942.jpg

http://i398.photobucket.com/albums/pp63/xavier10460/IMG_2932.jpg

http://i398.photobucket.com/albums/pp63/xavier10460/IMG_2930.jpg

[Russ Beavis]

A couple of quick observations.

1) please fix your wiring - red wires for every PD output regardless of + vs. - and two black battery cables into the PD? You're asking for trouble..
2) your DS clearly states "disabled", you need to use the toggle switch
3) why are the safe mode and IP reset switches set on your cRIO?

[professorX]

A couple of quick observations.

1) please fix your wiring - red wires for every PD output regardless of + vs. - and two black battery cables into the PD? You're asking for trouble..
2) your DS clearly states "disabled", you need to use the toggle switch
3) why are the safe mode and IP reset switches set on your cRIO?

Thank you for your response.

1) The wiring is only set up like this because the KoP only provided red wires. We are planning on going to Home Depot to buy black wires. Other than that, the wire color shouldn't matter.
2) We actually try with the dongle switch on and still did not work.
3) The safe mode and IP reset switches are set on because when we were reimaging the cRIO, it said to turn the IP reset and safe mode to ON. Can that be the problem?

Edit:
The cRIO, driver station and PC seems to be getting information since we did the Ping test VI.

[DonRotolo]

Is the PWM wire to the victor plugged in correctly? I can't tell from the photos. Not only is there an orientation, but these are tricky to get actually connected; it takes a light touch.

[professorX]

Is the PWM wire to the victor plugged in correctly? I can't tell from the photos. Not only is there an orientation, but these are tricky to get actually connected; it takes a light touch.
The PWM wire is correctly plugged into the speed controller.

I believe that the problem is with the driver station or the cRIO because when I test the Joystick input VI, the joystick values does not changes when I move the joystick.
I connected the joystick into the usb port before I turn it on.

On the driver station it displays:
Team: 1660
Mode: Teleoperated
System: Enabled
Battery: No Comms
DS Rev: 2008-10-29A

Does there need to be a jumper connected to any of the pins on the right side of the driver station?
Does it matter what kind of ethernet cable I use if its not the orangle cable? Currently I have the blue cable connected from ethernet port 2 of the driver station to the PC, and ethernet port 1 of the driver station to port 1 of the cRIO with the grey cable.
Can the problem be that the safe mode and the IP reset pins are set on the cRIO?

[s0crates]

(1) Does there need to be a jumper connected to any of the pins on the right side of the driver station?
(2) Does it matter what kind of ethernet cable I use if its not the orangle cable? Currently I have the blue cable connected from ethernet port 2 of the driver station to the PC, and ethernet port 1 of the driver station to port 1 of the cRIO with the grey cable.
(3)Can the problem be that the safe mode and the IP reset pins are set on the cRIO?

(1) No. Thats where you plug in i/o like switches.
(2) Sounds good...
(3) No clue - my team didn't toggle any of those when we set it up.

Are you certain the digital i/o module is in the right slot on the crio? I think the default is slot 4. If not, it looks like it would be 6.

The battery display on the ds is saying no comms because the analog breakout in slot one isn't wired up.


The light on the controller should be solid if its enabled and on autonomous.

Are the two lights next to ethernet port one on the crio blinking rapidly, or are they solid?

btw it might be helpful to see a photo of the top of the crio - what the breakouts look like etc.

-jonathan
rookie team 2733 the Pigmice

[professorX]

(1) No. Thats where you plug in i/o like switches.
(2) Sounds good...
(3) No clue - my team didn't toggle any of those when we set it up.

Are you certain the digital i/o module is in the right slot on the crio? I think the default is slot 4. If not, it looks like it would be 6.

The battery display on the ds is saying no comms because the analog breakout in slot one isn't wired up.


The light on the controller should be solid if its enabled and on autonomous.

Are the two lights next to ethernet port one on the crio blinking rapidly, or are they solid?


btw it might be helpful to see a photo of the top of the crio - what the breakouts look like etc.

-jonathan
rookie team 2733 the Pigmice
Thank you for your help.

I'm certain that the digital module is in the 4th slot of the cRIO.

Is it mandatory to wire up the analog breakout in slot one in order for this work?

What light on the controller (driver station(?)) would be solid?

The two lights next to Ethernet port one on the cRIO are blinking rapidly.

When I was imaging the cRIO it said to set safe mode (because the firmware on the cRIO was corrupted?) and IP reset to on. Afterward, it said it image the cRIO successfully.

[Mark McLeod]

You must turn off the cRIO "safe mode" and "IP reset" switches.
The only switch that you might want on is the "console out" switch.

On the DS, "No Comms" means the DS and cRIO are not communicating at all, so your program can't run. That is probably due to the IP reset having reset the cRIO IP to it's default of 10.0.0.2

[professorX]

You must turn off the cRIO "safe mode" and "IP reset" switches.
The only switch that you might want on is the "console out" switch.

On the DS, "No Comms" means the DS and cRIO are not communicating at all, so your program can't run. That is probably due to the IP reset having reset the cRIO IP to it's default of 10.0.0.2
When I turn off the Safe Mode and IP reset the status light starts blinking yellow.
When this occur I reflash the cRIO and it says to turn safe mode on and the IP reset.

[Mark McLeod]

I'd try flashing the cRIO from a different computer if you have one, even a desktop.
I've seen quite a few school laptops that had a conflict flashing the cRIO, where my laptop would work fine. Most of them failed at a point where the cRIO briefly uses an IP of 0.0.0.0

If you get a chance would you post a screen snapshot of the error message telling you to use IP Reset?

[professorX]

I'd try flashing the cRIO from a different computer if you have one, even a desktop.
I've seen quite a few school laptops that had a conflict flashing the cRIO, where my laptop would work fine. Most of them failed at a point where the cRIO briefly uses an IP of 0.0.0.0

If you get a chance would you post a screen snapshot of the error message telling you to use IP Reset?
I have tried with my personal laptop but the same problem occurs.
I will try again with a different computer and I'm going to post an image of the error on Monday since I'm not in school anymore.

Thank you for your help and everyone else. I will tell you on Monday on how it goes.

[rogeringalsbe]

Thank you for your help.

I'm certain that the digital module is in the 4th slot of the cRIO.

Is it mandatory to wire up the analog breakout in slot one in order for this work?

What light on the controller (driver station(?)) would be solid?

The two lights next to Ethernet port one on the cRIO are blinking rapidly.

When I was imaging the cRIO it said to set safe mode (because the firmware on the cRIO was corrupted?) and IP reset to on. Afterward, it said it image the cRIO successfully.


As far as the analog breakout goes, it is mandatory to wire that up. The analog breakout connects to the NI 9201 module in slot 1 of the cRIO. You have to connect the analog breakout to 12V power on the Power Distribution Board. Then you install a jumper on the outer two pins on the analog breakout so that the driver station will see battery voltage. The details are in Chapter 2 of the Control System manual section 2.2.3.2 step 3 (page 4). Hopefully this helps.:)

[professorX]

It seems that it's still not working.

I will try today to connect the cRIO directly to the computer with an orange cross cable and set the laptop IP address to 10.0.0.6 instead of 10.16.60.6. Maybe that will work?

The part that I don't understand is how can I reimage the cRIO through the driver station (laptop connected to driver station, driver station connected to cRIO), if the driver station can't communicate with the cRIO. :confused:

[rogeringalsbe]

In the forum someone included a link to a handy ping utility. We used this to verify our cRIO's IP address during some of our troubleshooting efforts. Perhaps it would help you. I will look for the link again and if I find it I will post it.

[Mark McLeod]

If you fire up the FRC cRIO Imaging Tool again it should be able to find the cRIO and tell you what it's IP address is currently set to. The reason you can reimage the cRIO with a mixed up IP address is that the Imaging Tool
will look for the cRIO at several common potential addresses and display the IP address at the top if it locates the cRIO.
You don't have to reimage the cRIO with the tool, just start it up to see where the cRIO is.

The pinger utility rogeringalsbe refered to is posted in the whitepaper section at: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2177


If you're still having trouble by this weekend is there any chance you can get to the workshop at Poly Tech in Brooklyn on Saturday with your system? We can work on it there.

[TDohse]

You should never need to turn on IP Reset.

As a general rule, the SAFE MODE switch should always be in the OFF position, for both reimaging and general usage.

There is one special case where users are required to turn Safe Mode on, and that is if the cRIO is severely corrupted (for instance, if you yank the power in the middle of reimaging) you can use Safe Mode with the imaging tool to reformat the device, after which you can turn SAFE MODE off and run the imaging tool again to set up the system correctly.

The problem professorx has run into is a misunderstanding of what the documentation was trying to convey. If you refer to the LabVIEW Robotics Programming Guide for FRC document, available by navigating to the National Instruments\LabVIEW8.5\manuals directory and opening FRC_Programming_Guide.pdf on page 3-5 under the heading "Considerations Before Running the CompactRIO Imaging Tool" it says:
Before running the CompactRIO Imaging Tool, ensure the SAFE MODE switch on the CompactRIO device is turned off. For routine use, do not use the CompactRIO Imaging Tool when the CompactRIO device is in SAFE MODE.
Severe corruptions of the software or settings on the CompactRIO device result in the device no longer functioning. If the CompactRIO device is corrupted or if the IP Address is set incorrectly, the device boots only in SAFE MODE. When this occurs, switch the device into SAFE MODE. The CompactRIO Imaging Tool offers to reformat the disk. After the disk has been reformatted, switch the CompactRIO device out of SAFE MODE, reboot, and run the CompactRIO Imaging Tool normally

[professorX]

I finally got the electronics to work.

We ended up calling National Instruments, the people that made the cRIO, and they told us the problem was that the switches on the cRIO were not in the correct positions. All of the switches were set to on even though it shows in the picture that it's off except for safe mode and ip reset. So basically it was a manufacture problem. The solution was to turn all the switches to the east (right).


Important note to other teams: if you really need help with the cRIO and you tried almost everything, please don't hesitate to call them. They get paid to help you.
The number is
1-866-511-6285
1-7pm Central and just tell them your team number!
(also the number to call to repair or buy more cRIOs)

Taken from here:
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=10875

Thank you to everyone who has helped me and others! That is what FIRST is all about.

[crake]

Glad to hear it was figured out! :)