Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Hey ChiefDelphi,

We are trying to run code on to a 8 slot cRio. We have had no issues until today. What happens is we are able to deploy code to the cRio perfectly fine and like normal (we are using labview) and the robot will start up. We then can enable or disable the robot but we are hitting huge issues with communication. The robot code and communication lights on the driver station all of the sudden will go red and then come back on. This will happen around once every 2 seconds but it is super inconsistent. We have tried looking for shorts, unplugging the analog and digital modules in the cRio, etc. Sometimes we think something fixes it and then it will occur again. As for code, we don't see an issue as we time all of our vis and they all are running perfectly fine in terms of processing speed.

Here is the message in the dialog box on the driver station:
FRC: The Driver Station has lost communication with the robot.
Warning <Code> 44003 occurred at Driver Station
OR
FRC: No robot code is currently running.
Warning <Code> 44002 occurred at Ping Results: link-bad, DS radio(.4)-bad, robot radio(.1)-bad, cRIO(.2)-bad, FMS-bad Driver Station

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

We've run into similar situations before. In both cases it was a wiring problem. With the robot stationary it worked fine but the slightest vibration caused communication failure. Three likely sources to check for secure wiring: power to crio (both on crio and where crio connects to pd board) and router connection on pd board.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

That error suggests the ping to both the radio and cRIO failed. Is this happening over wireless, wired or both. If wired are you going through the radio or direct to the cRIO?

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Does it happen only when using wireless networking? There might be a nearby wireless access point interfering with your communication. If you have a way to scan for wireless networks, maybe you can find a relatively clear 802.11 channel and configure your D-Link to use that channel instead of letting it pick one on its own.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

We are having the exact same problem as stingray27. I'm fairly sure it's not a wiring issue because this only happens when connecting wirelessly and it happens even if the robot is not moving. There is a high probability of other networks interfering with the communication; Alan, how could one tell if an 802.11 channel is relatively clear? We've had communication problems both at our school and our racing company mentor's garage.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

How is your bridge attached to tour robot because we had a similar issue and we think that it is because of our mount was made out of metal so we are now replacing our mount with on made out of plastic.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Our bridge is attached to plastic using zip-ties and velcro.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Use a WiFi scanner program such as NetStumbler or inSSIDer to see what wireless access points are nearby and what channels they're using.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Did this work for you? As we are having a similar issue.

Re: Driver Station Loosing Communication
 

Yes, we too have the error exactly. Even if it is hardwired to the radio. It doesn't seem to affect anything in any way though; our code runs fine. We are using 6-slot crio with the new dLink.