cRio problems.
 

Right, so it's late in the evening on our final build day and ugh. The cRio is acting up.

Upon powering up the robot, the power and status lights come on, and then the status light goes out. All normal, but then the power light goes out and the cRio is dead. Turn the robot off and on, the same thing happens again. Oh, low battery, right? I swap in a new battery, still the same problem. Maybe a software problem, I think. Boot in to safe mode, all is well. The cRio remains on. Right, so let me reformat. I begin reformatting, and after a bit the cRio just shuts off. Ahhhhhhhh!!! Now when I power up the cRio, the status light just sort of blinks and then it shuts off.

Any ideas, or should we just cut our losses and send it in for repair ASAP?

Thank you in advance for helping our rookie team.

Re: cRio problems.
 

you do not have to ship your electronics with your robot so i would recommend to just send the cRio in for repair and even buy another one. then attach your electronics at competition

Re: cRio problems.
 

Yeah, if you send in your cRIO for repair it shouldn't be a problem. Our robot took a little too much abuse and eventually, one of the pins in the cRIO got smashed. Luckily for us, it still ran like a dream afterwards.

Re: cRio problems.
 

I am betting that a close inspection of both ends of the power cable feeding the Crio will show a short due to exposed wire in the connectors. There is also a possible problem with the Crio. You can check by simply removing all wiring from the Crio except the power supply wiring. turn on power and see if the same condition occurs.
What you describe indicates the 24 volt power supply is shutting down.

Re: cRio problems.
 

You should definitely call National Instruments tech support for FIRST. We called them last week regarding a malfunctioning cRIO, and their tech support was great. They told us exactly what tests to try, we tried the tests and confirmed the cRIO was bad. This was at about 3pm in the afternoon. They said they would send us a replacement cRIO -- it arrived at 10:30am the next morning! We then packed up the broken cRIO in the box that the replacement was sent in, stuck on the pre-addressed and pre-paid FedEx shipping label that National Instruments sent with the replacement cRIO and sent the broken cRIO straight back to National Instruments. We couldn't have asked for better support to get back up and running immediately!