[Patrick Chiang]

I agree that some parts of the documentation are lacking, or even completely incorrect in some instances, but most of it isn't a giant issue (imho) that would "teach them [kids] to give up in life". Besides, even if FIRST is primarily about education (hint: it's not), not everything in life comes with a nicely written manual meticulously error-checked by a university professor.

1. Regarding CAN, are you guys using PID control and encoders? The problems you're describing sound a lot like issues with your PID values. I'm only asking because most teams only use CANs for its PID control features. If yes, then perhaps you should read the Wikipedia article on PID control loops and how to tune them. BDC-Comm is a good program to use for the black jaguars provided by FIRST.

2. You should not need to setExpiration for CAN. Place it in a thread so that other code don't interfere with its operations.

3. Same with updateDashboard, put that in a separate thread.