Failed Benchtop test
 

I have searched both in CD and on FIRST Forums.

We tethered the cRIO and the DS together and when we enable the DS with the dongle, the lights on the victors still flash as if they have no signal or it is disabled.

We have triple checked all connections on the Electrical and Driver stations. Any ideas on the problem? and a solution to it?
We are using victors instead of Jaguars, could this be the problem?

Thank you in advance
Erin from 2234

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

I had this same problem helping a different team. Everything was wired correctly but I had forgotten to switch it from Auto to Tele....

Steve

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Just wondering, does the motors turn when you push the joystick forward? The lights will always flash if there is currently no data going through the victor/jaguar, but they should turn to a solid red or green light when you move the joystick.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

We set ours up w/ victors and it works. You just need to know a bit more than the directions state when you do wifi.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

You might simply not have completely inserted the male end of the PWM cable into the Victor's connector. It isn't obvious to an inexperienced set of fingers whether the connection is made properly. Try reseating the connector, aiming for it to go a few more millimeters deeper than it was the first time.

It might help to use a strong light to look into the Victor's PWM connector and get a good idea of exactly where the pins need to go.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

A good thought, but unfornutely, it doesn't work when the joysticks are pushed forward (or back.)

Also it is in Teleop, and We have tried reseating the PWMs.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

You would also see the light not come on if you don't have the dongle attached and the DS set to enable mode.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

The dongle is in and it is set to enabled.
We are baffled by the problem.
Should we try to re-image the cRIO?

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

No don't think you're suppose to re-image the cRIO or update the driver station Firmware until after you have completed testing the hardware portion (what you are trying to do now), according to the benchtest manual.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Are you sure you have the wiring in the correct direction? I believe the white wire on the PWM cable should face the inside of the digital side card and on the Victor the white wire should face towards the outside edge. Also make sure you have the digital side card plugged into the cRio via the digital expansion module closest to the network ports.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Yeah, we've checked all our connections on the cRIO and the electrical board. So far, nothing has changed...

It seems one of the problems is that we can't see the cRIO on the laptop. We've connected the cRIO to the laptop with an Ethernet crossover. Although the laptop can see that something is plugged in, it cannot establish connectivity with the cRIO so we can't image it. We think this is the same problem as the DS being unable to enable to the cRIO...any thoughts?

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

I'll have Brian from 103 respond to this, if he's unable to figure it out, how far are you from their area?

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

does your digital sidecar have power? when we first set up ours we forgot to power it, without the digital sidecar being powered it cant recieve the signal from the module and can't sent out a pwm signal.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Yes the digital sidecar has power, all three lights(5V,6V and the one that says BAT) come on. Every other indicator that the board has that is mentioned in the Benchtop test documentation comes on.

We think there may be something wrong with cRIO. We have tried using other crossover cables to see if the cable itself was the problem, but it still won't connect to anything.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Crossover cable? You should only use that to connect the camera to the cRIO's second ethernet port. All the other ethernet cables you use should be standard straight-through connections.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Hey Erin you should see if you guys can come to LM this saturday, our Lockheed guys can help you out.

Facebook me about it. :D

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

We've tried with straight up Ethernet cables, too, and still nothing.

We're located in Newtown Square, and I think that's around 2 hours from where 103 is...we might try calling an NI engineer and asking if it's a problem with the cRIO itself.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Please go ahead and contact NI through ni.com/first.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

did you use the victors, that you are ussing, in prevouis years. The last 2 years we had to reset the victors before they would work for us. To reset:
(1)make sure all power is off, so either diconnect the battery or manualy trip the main circuit breaker.
(2) ther is a little hole on the victors, there is a little switch inside. get something small that can fit in the hole.
(3) hold the switch down, and while still holding it down, turn on the power. the victor light should be a solid color.
(4)keep holding down the button in tell it starts flashing.
(5)to test if it worked: turn on and connect the driver station and the light on the victor should be a solid yellow when everything else is set up right.

PS: make susre you have the pwm cables pluged in the rght direction. The white part of the cable should be plugged into the signal side of the port.

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Here's a random thought: make sure only ONE of the serial-like cables (going from the cRIO to the power distribution) is connected to the cRIO. I had similar problems but when that was disconnected it worked perfectly fine. Obviously make sure the one connected is going to the power distribution that has the wire in it (hooked up in the first signal slot)

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Thank you to everyone who posted a suggestion.
We got it to work at last by setting the IP address. (I will get the teammate who did it to post a more detailed discription)

Good luck with the rest of build season!!

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

The only connection from the cRIO to the Power Distribution is the 24 volt power (plus 12 volts to each of the Solenoid and Analog Breakouts).

Do you mean the 39-pin cable used to connect a cRIO 9403 digital I/O module to a Digital Sidecar?

Re: Failed Benchtop test
 

Thanks for everyone's help! We've finally figured it out; we had to set the IP address of our Ethernet port on the laptop and then Image the cRIO to set the IP on the cRIO itself. For anyone else who has this problem, what we did was:

1. Disable all other connections (internet, etc)
2. Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections
3. Doubleclick Local Area Connections
4. Click Properties
5. Scroll Down in the windown and double click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
6. Click Use the following IP address and set the IP Address to 10.xx.yy.6 where xxyy is your team number
7. Set the Subnet Mask to 255.0.0.0 and click OK
8. Open up the FRC cRIO Imaging Tool and check Format Controller
9. Set the Team ID to your Team number (xxyy)
10. Let it image - this should take a while