CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We got the most recent LabView update today, and after reimaging the CRio (which was successful by the way), I opened the driver's station. My computer is tethered to the bot and we have not had communications problems before now. Now, even though I can ping the robot successfully, the communications only like to come on for one second, turn off, wait a minute, and then repeat. On the CRio, the Status LED blinks 4 times in a row and repeats that. I have power-cycled the bot many times and, yes, I have restarted my computer. Nothing is working.

What happened? Does the Labview update contain evil?:eek:

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

After imaging the cRIO, there is no code installed on the robot. Does that explain your problem?

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

It's not the fact that there is no code, it's the fact that for some reason, the CRio doesn't want to admit that it's connected to my computer. My mentor said something about the CRio being "Bricked" but I have no idea what that means.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We are having the same issue. After re-imaging the cRio (three times successfully) and updating labview, we cannot run code on the cRio. We can ping it but when we try to "run at startup" we get a message that Labview cannot communicate with the real time target. The status light on the cRio repeats a series of 4 flashes as reported above.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Four flashes means a double crash. The manual mentions it could be due to running out of memory.

You may want to watch the deployment dialog closely to see if that indicates a memory issue.

Greg McKaskle

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Just got the same thing at one of the teams here.

Re-imaged the cRIO with v27 and we start getting the 4 blinks repeated.
Cannot download code but can reimage it to our hearts content.

I can reimage with v25 and everything works fine again.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Does the serial console show anything interesting?

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I have console dumps, but haven't been able to look at them.
I did get it working, but I'll have to wait on posting an update.
I'm in transit between teams.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We managed to get code to deploy/run a few times but mostly we get the four flashes in Status. On one of the times it worked, I checked the memory usage and there was still 16K or so free.

The four flashes in status start even after a reboot with no attempt to deploy. I tried disconnecting everything - removing all sidecar adapters, ethernet connections etc. And rebooted. And still the cRIO showed four flashes.

From a laptop I can ping the cRio before trying to run. When I try to run I get "can't connect to real time target" but after cancelling, I can still ping the cRio.

I have not tried to go back to v25. I'll check that out.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

16K is not much. Can you verify that number and clarify when you are at 16K?

Greg McKaskle

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I just want to jump in to say that we've seen similar issues since the update.

Since the update we haven't been able to deploy code wirelessly. When we try to deploy wired, we haven't been successful when hooked to the Dlink. If we connect directly to the cRIO, we are successful deploying about 25% of the time (i.e. it takes about 4 tries before it works).

After deploying new software and rebooting, we are able to get the robot to run wirelessly through the driver station. No issues.

We have not yet been able to run software via the Run button since the update. It starts to run and then it promply loses connection.

That's all I have for now. I won't see the cRIO until Wednesday night, so if I notice anything new then I'll try and post it.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I currently have a temporary solution. Our team had the same problem and what we found is that we plug an ethernet cord into the linksys slot 1 in the rear and plug the other end into a laptop and wait a bit it finally works. we have no clue why but it works. also, one of our mentors (going for his masters in computer science) played around with it a bit and all of a sudden it works well now. We don't even have to plug it into an ethernet cord and laptop. :) yay :)

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I can later reply back with a post on what he did when i meet him next.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We made some progress in identifying this problem.

First, reimaging back to the v25 cRio firmware corrected the problem. There were no blinking status lights and we could deploy code at will.

I then re-imaged using v27 making sure to connect directly from PC to cRio via ethernet. The four blink status light returned. We could not deploy code getting the "failed to connect to Real-time Target" message. We checked to make sure Labview was at 3.1 FRC level.

We had loaded the CAN driver for the Black Jaguar Serial Bridge and had that working under v25. In the cRio Imaging tool I first changed the plugin to "None" leaving "Enable NetConsole" checked. Reimaged at v27 and still had four blink status.

Then I unchecked "Enable NetConsole" and reimaged. That seemed to fix it. cRio booted and I was able to deploy code.

It appears that adding the NetConsole and maybe CAN is consuming memory and putting us over. We have a 2009 cRio. Does this make sense? Are we going to have to avoid CAN? An ideas?

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Please post console logs (both NetConsole and Serial Console) when you see this issue.

Thanks,
-Joe

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I don't think the logs I captured are particularly useful, and they weren't comprehensive.
I had to bring in several other laptops after the problem occurred to start the monitoring.

This particular log shows two boots, but unfortunately the problem may have been fixed by this point.
The first boot generated the 4 flashes, and caused an automatic reboot.
The second boot was a successful recovery from the same.

I have had several other cRIOs reimaged without any issues. Maybe one 4-flash that caused a then successful reboot.

In the case I saw, the v27 reformatting enabled NetConsole, and had None for CAN.
Cycling the power had no affect and the 4-flashes continued unabated.

Changing DIP switches, e.g., Safe Mode, didn't seem to affect the 4-flashes and the cRIO remained unresponsive.
The flashes began very quickly, so it may be before any image gets loaded or early in the load process.

Reimaging (from same Classmate) with v27 completed successfully, but had no affect.

Reimaging to v25 worked, then a repeat of v27 was successful.

--------
On a side note, Classmates that installed the LabVIEW Update, but didn't install the LabVIEW DVD, look normal from a distance. :rolleyes:
I had to be there to notice all the missing software, but the version information was right up to date...

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We are having the exact same problem on our robot. I didn't check for the blinking LED, but once we updated to version 27 we could still reimage and connect through ftp, however LabVIEW was unable to connect. Once we reimaged with v25, all was good. One of our tests included not imaging with the black jaguar plugin and we still had issues.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I re-imaged our cRio to v27 first with just NetConsole and then with both NetConsole and CAN Jaguar Black Serial plugin. Of course, now it seems to work. I ran LabView code that was essentially the default FRC cRIO Robot Project modified to drive a single motor using CAN.

From the console log, I did see two troubling messages when the cRIO boots:
interrupt: PCI Error: initiator aborted due to timeout
interrupt: PCI Error: initiator aborted due to timeout

I'm not sure what they mean but the system appeared to work. I was able to deploy and run CAN code. The system crashed once, I think when I was using the System Monitor. In the several times I ran code from LabView I received the Unable to connect to real-time target only once, accompanied by four flashes in the status LED. I didn't see anything in the netConsole at that time.

I'll do more testing tomorrow. The NetConsole log I captured is attached.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We afre seeing the same issue here. Spent a few days trying to figure out what was wrong with the rio before finding this.

We flashed with net console and CAN enabled for the black jags (didn't try with can disabled).

Flashed to v27 innumerable times (flashing always worked fine), labview would not deploy code. I was able to ping and ftp into the rio without issue. The driver station would see robot comms on bootup momentarily, then it would lose it. I was able to successfully deploy from labview maybe 10% of the time. After a sucessful deploy, control through the driver station worked reliably.

This is pretty easy to replicate on our end.

The only fix that seemed to work reliably was to flah back to v25.

We seem to be hitting bugs this year every step of the way. Last week it was problems with the encoders. I don't mean to complain, but these types of issues don't help when your trying to teach the kids how something "should work"

What gives?

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I have an update from last night.

We added case structures to timed tasks to be sure that none of our code in timed tasks runs unless the robot is enabled. It took about 4 tries to deploy this software (using Run As Startup). After getting this software on the cRIO, we never had another problem.

It makes me think that something in v27 is taking up a lot of CPU overhead causing issues with the communication. I seem to remember issues last year when the user software started taking up too much CPU time, it became difficult to deploy code. Perhaps this is similar.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

It does have the look and feel of something that doesn't finish booting due to some race condition and locks up specific cRIO resources. Once you break free of it, everything is fine.

Some services are blocked or slowed while others remain unimpaired.
Probably, due to specific resource conflicts.

I would hazard that it isn't cRIO CPU overhead though, since some low-priority services (ftp) sometimes work. Those are the first to fail when there's a CPU shortage.
The 4-flashes might indicate that memory isn't being released by something that sucked it up, then doesn't complete and just sits there. Maybe two boot tasks asking for a combined 110% of memory at the same time, then waiting for the other to give up first. Sort of an OS hydra staring contest.

One thing to test, if it happens to any of us again, is to run the LabVIEW System Manager and monitor the CPU and Memory usage for clues. Do it before attempting to download or do anything else, while the 4 flashes are occurring.
If anything significant happens take a screen shot and post it for the rest of us.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Well, I spoke too soon. When our programmers started up the cRio this afternoon we again got the four flash status light and inability to deploy code to the cRio. They reimaged the cRio with v27 without NetConsole and everything seemed to work.

To debug this further, I reimaged with the v27 with NetConsole and CAN Black Jag. The attached log shows the results of two instances of failed boots. Both resulted in four flash status lights. I tested several more times and got the same results - we had no successful boots. I re-imaged without the NetConsole and the system works. CAN is enabled and working.

It appears from the logs that we are getting two crashes without a reboot which is one of the interpretations of the four flash status. All appear to be an 0x00300 exception.

So it may not be memory related. Though removing the NetConsole code seems to help. The other day when the system was working with the full image including the NetConsole, System Manager reported that I still had about 18900K of free memory.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Since some of you have narrowed it down to what appears to be NetConsole.out, but the log that captured the exceptions all showed lvrt.out on the call stack, I'd like you to try pulling the NetConsole.out binary from the v25 image an placing it in the v27 image and attempt to reproduce the issue. It's possible that something the NetConsole is doing on startup is causing lvrt.out to crash, but I'd like to make sure the v27 version of NetConsole is to blame and not the v27 environment.

Thanks,
-Joe

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

I'll give that a try this evening.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We were able to reproduce the issue on one of the cRIOs here and believe we have fixed the issue causing the 4 blinks and the "Exception code: 0x00000300"

Please download the new image from FIRST Forge here: http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/go/proj...crio_image_v28

Let me know if this resolves the issue for you.

Thanks,
-Joe

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Thanks Joe! We'll try it tomorrow.

As you expected, replacing the NetConsole.out file in v27 with the v25 file removed the error.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We flashed to v28 today from v25.
Everything appears to be functioning as expected. We'll report back if we see any issues.

Thanks!

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Our experience seems to indicate something going on with the "Enable NetConsole - CAN Driver Plugin - Black Jaguar Serial Bridge" option that we chose to install with our v25 and v27 imaging.

At 1:30PM, we installed the FRC_2011_v27.zip image that came with the latest Labview v3.1 update, via the tether. The dialog box indicated that the installation was successful. I rebooted/cycled the cRIO while the main programming crew was at lunch.

At 1:50PM - when the main programming crew came back - they simply tried to install our working baseline code. The download just about immediately stalled and threw an error. Seems that an entry in the ni-rt.ini file under the "Startup Dlls" entry section on the cRIO was incompatible with the newer image. We ftp'd into the cRIO, pulled the ni-rt.ini file to the Developer laptop and deleted the entry - and placed the ni-rt.ini file back on the cRIO. At least that got us back to an earlier version of the ini file.

At 2:20PM -- after finding a copy of the v25 image on a Mentor's laptop - we imaged the cRIO with the older v25 image. We checked the "Enable NetConsole - CAN Driver Plugin - Black Jaguar Serial Bridge" options. This imaging was also successful. AND our CAN/Black Jag code now worked. We figured we lost about 1 1/2 of prime Saturday programming time dealing with this anomoly.

Our experience with v27 and our basic CAN/Black Jag-centric baseline code indicates that there is a serious incompatibility. We figure that until v27 is "fixed" - we will just have to use the v25 image.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

v27 had changes to a number of components including NetConsole. If NetConsole was enabled, the changes were overflowing a thread stack and in some situations caused the crash, reboot, and blink. v28 is identical to v27 except it contains a NetConsole with about 16KB more stack for the thread.

Obviously you can continue with v25 for the remainder of the build, but v28 has been posted. You can try it if it fits your schedule. FIRST should officially announce it in the next update -- the bug was reproduced and fixed on Friday.

Greg McKaskle

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Thx Greg, Thx Joe - we'll try the new v28 image when we get back to our Developer laptop.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

We reimaged with the v28 image and things seem to be working as expected. Joe, thanks for figuring this out and fixing it!

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

how do we update to v28 please help?

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Take the LabVIEW v28 image from Source Forge and drop it in:
C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 8.6\project\CRIO Tool\FRC Images\FRC_2011_v28.zip

Then it will appear in the cRIO Imaging Tool list.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

@ mark
Thanks ill try it when I get to build site.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

It works thank your very much.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Just to cover some bases for ChaosX73:

I can't seem to image the cRio from my personal laptop, so I have to use the classmate. I 'bricked' (which means to turn it into an expensive paper-weight) our cRio by using the imaging tool on my laptop, so the way you have to fix it is format the cRio. You format it by putting the cRio in safe-mode. Once its in safe mode, try to deploy code using the imaging tool. It will recognize it in safe-mode and ask if you want to format it, do so. This will return it to its normal state so you can put new code on.

Its likely not bricked, so try and just deploy v28, but if your computer doesn't recognize it and the IP address doesn't seem to be recognized by your computer, its likely bricked.

Again, this is just to cover some bases for ChaosX73. Hope it helps! :D

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

where do we put the downloaded image on the PC so it shows up in frc crio imaging tool.
thanks:)

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

nvm got it guys. thanks

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

Heads up.

Our team played at the Suffield Shakedown, they had the real field and FMS setup.

Our cRIO was imaged with this early release version of v28 and our robot was not able to connect to the field.

I can't say for sure if others will see this same issue at regionals, but avoid the headache an re-image asap using the official release.

Re: CRio Connection: Buggy
 

There is no difference. v28 is v28 regardless of how you got it.