Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

Just to sharpen a few points.

The control packets are sent at 50Hz from the DS. The FTA counter resets at match start, so should see around 7000 packets sent during a match. 3500 lost packets is a lot, but depending on the distribution, it could mean 25Hz control with no packet loss or half the match spent disabled.

The Graphs tab of the DS shows the packet loss per second along with lag. This is later viewable using the DS Log File Viewer app. This tells you during the match how the lost packets were distributed and what the lag was. It will show any periods where the robot is disabled as well. You will find hundreds of logs to compare against at other events, practice fields, etc.

Also, the default dashboard shows the current camera settings, current bandwidth usage due to camera, and an LED is colored according to how this matches the field limits. There is also a control for enabling/disabling the camera and changing the three settings that most affect bandwidth.

I'd be happy to look at some team logs if they would post them.

Greg McKaskle

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

How does this indicator determine what the field limits are?
Is it set dynamically based on the field configuration or set based on a static expectation?
I've seen fields with the channel bonding on and with it the channel bonding off.

In the case of a few of these teams that were disabled or had performance issues more than once I asked them to see their DS log viewer and you could see the bursts of missed packets. More than enough during those peaks to disable their robot till it got more FMS packets.

In the case of the one team that had effectively had 25Hz control I know what they did because I asked the person that helped them work that out. Mostly because usually when I see missed packet counts that high it will shortly be followed by a complaint.

The problem with all these tools is that you probably will look after you had a problem on a competition field.
Then you might change the settings but by then you are already down a match or if you are lucky maybe a practice match.

Though it is nice to be able to collect evidence I wonder how much of this evidence gets off the driver's station in the end.
At least 2 of these teams has no idea they had so many logs already.
Since these robots have been getting onto these fields for months there should be dozens of match logs where this behavior is visible.

Is there a button or control somewhere I do not know about to upload logs to be examined?
I am not seeing one on these directions:
http://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/...og-file-viewer
This might be something I am missing but by the time people are disappointed I think they are not interested in digging around a lot then figuring out how to send this.
I've asked for this evidence myself in the past so I could forward it but I've rarely gotten it.

If this feature does not yet exist could I ask for it to be implemented?

Also Greg, if you like, I can send you an iPhone video I have with a total missing packet count of 5,000 packets from the team with the code that could tolerate this. They never got disabled. I just noticed this because at the time I made that video it was to track an issue for Team 11 with the RoboRIO. Might I add I was happy to see the RoboRIO performed as well as it did considering the robot it was on was often dragged down to 6V on the battery. As far as I am concerned that was a good improvement.

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

My answers are marked with ***s.

How does this indicator determine what the field limits are?
Is it set dynamically based on the field configuration or set based on a static expectation?
I've seen fields with the channel bonding on and with it the channel bonding off.

*** The LEDs are based on the static guidelines. They are in effect with and without a field so hopefully a team will identify a 15Mbps camera before they compete.

*** The field is typically using bonded channels, but for a portion of 2013 it didn't, and in some venues it may not be feasible. Even without bonding, the field "should" have enough bandwidth to run a match with all robots using the recommended bandwidth. But some venues are challenging.

...

The problem with all these tools is that you probably will look after you had a problem on a competition field.
Then you might change the settings but by then you are already down a match or if you are lucky maybe a practice match.

*** The LEDs and Mbps values are there even when not on the field, so hopefully most teams are prepared. The charts are live on the DS, but not in the front tab. Yes, these metrics are mostly for analysis following a match. My time machine is on the fritz.

...

Is there a button or control somewhere I do not know about to upload logs to be examined?

***
The Screensteps indicates that it is available in the Start Menu or in Program Files. There is in fact a button for launching the viewer, but the docs were not updated. In 2015, the button is even more prominent. The button I'm commenting on opens the file in the Viewer on the DS laptop. There is no button to send this to FIRST since they have a subset of this info already. I'm don't work for FIRST, so I'll sometimes ask teams if I can get their logs to help identify what happened. The log file viewer shows where they are saved and lets you look at other locations in case you want to have archives of other years/events.


If this feature does not yet exist could I ask for it to be implemented?

*** Too many pronouns, what feature is being requested?


Greg McKaskle

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

I think the issue is more that teams get close enough to the bandwidth that they think should work but not quite below the limit sufficiently. Such that they get some operation but then get cut off here and there. Sometimes they say they were fine at the last competition but then get to another and they are not fine (when in fact they were always skirting with this issue). Compression makes this a little more complicated because the bandwidth of the video changes slightly based on what is being shown and that changes all the time.

So, if a team does not look at the logs, they might think they dragged down the battery or had a software problem. This misleads them into thinking they are not having this issue. Also some teams change out the robot operators so they don't think to go back and look at these logs which would still show the lost packets.

In fairness this is a tool teams should leverage more often.

(We could solve the whole real time video issue if we could just travel forward in time and record the match then play it back in the past. :))

True enough. Increasingly the 5GHz WiFi spectrum is being gobbled up by schools and other mobile devices capable of using it. We can't always clear the air to use what we might like.

At the time I wrote that I was wondering if we could get a button that would send the log we have open to a central server somewhere, like perhaps something linked to NI Parkway. Though the more I thought about it: there might not be Internet access to their driver's station at the competition (usually there is...but not always).

So I think I will modify my feature request based on what I just wrote. Can we get a button in the DS log viewer that will compress and transfer all the current match logs (or at least the currently displayed log in the DS log viewer) to a USB flash drive? So that I can just plug in and take all their logs with me by clicking that button? (If this is too much trouble I can write a little bit of code to achieve this and put it on a USB flash drive. I usually have several with me when I CSA anyway for all the documents and updates).

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

As a mentor for a beta team, I can tell you that support for the Kinect has been discontinued for the roboRIO(I think their reasoning was that it was too much of a hassle to keep up with Microsoft's updates). Keep this in mind as you plan for the coming year.

EDIT: As Alan pointed out below, this is not entirely correct. The Driver Station will not support the Kinect, but that doesn't really answer your question. Apologies for giving the wrong impression.

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

I don't think what you wrote is what you meant. Kinect was never "supported" for the roboRIO in the first place. Teams that used it as a robot sensor did so on their own, without using FIRST-provided software.

It's the Driver Station that will no longer support a Kinect next year. That isn't what Steve was asking about.

Re: Vision: what's state of the art in FRC?
 

Corrected. Thanks.