Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

To team 364: your robot is a very impressive and accurate shooter! I'm cheering for your team when I'm watching the webcast!:cool:

Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

No issues all day. I'm too saddened we could not find the root cause. I'm also extremely curious.

Thanks again for all the help everyone has provided. I also want to thank all the volunteers at Lone Star that have helped us make it happen.

-Ryan Nazaretian

Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

Well, it is either the Bayou field/wireless environment, or your old radio, right?

If there is time after the event or during lunch tomorrow, maybe you can try the old radio?

Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

great day for fusion, mazel tov and enjoy lone star. still i too would like to really know what was the issue at bayou.......

Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

Ryan

We had a similar problem at the Madera tournament last week. We had a single good match and then the robot started going off line. Out of the remaining 10 matches, we had a single match where we had full connectivity between our robot, driver's station and the field. Most of the matches, we never were able to communicate with the robot.

Similar to what you did, we completely tore apart the robot throughout the competition. We started by replacing the Dlink, but eventually replace the software, the power distribution board, the digital sidecar and the CRio. We actually went through four separate routers and three power distribution boards.

The robot started to come back at the end of the competition and we maintained full connectivity at the final match. The problem was, by the time we go to that match, we had rewired so much and some of the connections were done incorrectly that the robot failed to perform properly.

In hindsight, I'm pretty certain that the issue was with the CRio because once we replaced that, the robot started to recover. We replaced that as the very last item. I definitely wouldn't recommend swapping out as many electrical components as what we did unless it's an absolute necessity. I don't think software was ever an actual issue with the robot not performing correctly.

This was extremely difficult to try and lead the team through. At the same time, I'm immensely humbled and grateful to the mentors and students from other teams, members from the FIRST competition, National Instruments, CSAs and FTAs that tried to help us get the robot back on line. I think that's the great testimony to the people involved with the FIRST program that they provided this much assistance.

We'll keep working our issue and try to find the actual failure. We'll also have to spend some time analyzing our team processes that might have possibly caused that failure.

Scott

Re: Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes
 

Ryan,
We just didn't have similar problems with what you experienced we had almost the exact problems you guys had. Even to the running all alone on an empty field Friday evening with no problems. Then coming back Saturday morning with the same problem. We had run only two practice matches on Thursday. The first with than 1522 still programmed from the LA regional so it just sat there with no connectivity for the first match. We reprogrammed it for the second practice session and the robot worked but was physically damage by a collision. I was not a witness to this match so I don't know the details. Our first match on Friday morning the robot started in teleop but lost communication almost intermediately for 42 seconds then lost again for another 40 seconds or so. End of match. Second time lost comm at the start of the match again the only movement I saw was our shooter motor trying to start then we lost comm. The FTA said it was for 40 seconds or so they suggested it was the Crio rebooting. I never saw the RSL light go off during any of the matches so I don't think the cRIO rebooted. I'm not sure what we replaced the next match and so on but we tried everything you did 3 radios , cRio twice, 12-5volt converter, PDB 3 times , basic source code, removed all other supposed power noise problems except the drive wheels. For our last 5 matches on Friday I watched from behind the FMS display. As soon as they reloaded the display with our match teams the display would show us as disconnected and dropping packets. They would wait till we intermittently showed green then start the match. Needless to say we lost comm every time at the start. Did I mention that Friday night when everybody was gone we ran OK? The order of replacing the different items are not clear to me as they weren't under my control. At this point I was just shaking my head and thinking how are we going to get this robot back together for St. Louis. On our 9th match we had replaced the digital side car?? and the cRio again along with the cards?? Now this is what I can say for certainty about this match. I'm sitting behind the FMS display again at the start of the match they bring our robot onto the field the display is updated to our current match. The display shows our robot dropped comm with packets dropping constantly. Two FTA's go to our robot do something (several minutes went by ) (queue dancing and loud music) They start to leave the arena and our robot shows connectivity and no dropped packets. Match starts our robot moves sort of Jags miss wired ball pick up set to the compressors pwm signal but we move the whole match with very few packets lost. I asked the FTA what he did and he said they connected the driver station to the robot when they saw no connectivity and it connected ok through a cable. But when he disconnected the Driver Station the radio would not connect to the field so he powered off the robot to rebooted the robot. When it came back up we have connectivity for the entire match. Next match we make sure we do not connect the robot to our driver station by cable or if we do we power the robot off then on and so on our last match we ran again not perfect because of the code we had running but we ran the whole match with few lost packets. The only thing I can say is that you shouldn't connect the DS to the robot prior to going onto the field with out turning the robot off afterward. We will check our radios and crio at the school when I get a chance. Trying to find the original culprit. BTW this is only our second year and are just starting to learn about the drivers log etc.