[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Brian,
I suggest you look back and reread what I have said to you and to others. You believe your team obviously has a power issue but you refuse to perform the tests that would point to a power issue on your own robot. Do so and bring us the results. You do not need a competition field to do that (try using FMS Lite). Your robot remains a stand alone component that if power is an issue, it should show up that problem on your home field. If you find something that others have not, then and only then can FIRST actually decide to pursue an investigation using other methods. You must admit that what you are asking requires a rather large expense on First to accomplish. Bring valid data to support your claim and First can weigh your data against the need to expend further money and resources in the pursuit of a radio power supply issue.

Al, Team 11 did have a power issue. Replacing the DC-DC converter at the competition did fix it. You want this DC-DC converter? I ask because when this topic and the vector it was following wouldn't stop before I offered to remove *myself* from this issue and let someone you were seemingly more comfortable with perform the analysis to your satisfaction.

The solution to the problem is past tense. It was found.

Other teams did have a power issue. They replaced the PDB and it did fix it.

Past tense and in the next part I accept that you publicly acknowledge this.

As for myself and all other robot inspectors, we take our job very seriously. When we don the shirt and hat we take on every team as our own, bar none. When they fail on the field, we fail. When they go home with a loss, so to do we. We feel strongly that the success of an event lies our in our hands and the happiness of the competitors is our highest measure of success. We cheer for everyone because that is what we are required to do in this competition. When we see something wrong we try to fix it or we find someone who can. We do this at every competition for every team, all weekend, without regard to team number or qualifying slot. Should an inspector or Lead not meet these goals, I want to know about it. Teams need to be able to trust and believe in the assistance of their inspectors. Our stated goal is to insure you play (within the rules) and not to prevent you from playing. I can tell you that robots not running is a common discussion topic during volunteer meals for inspectors. We pass along what we find so that all teams can fully participate.

Sir with respect. I am not accusing you of active favoritism. Other than the mere fact that when you don't like something other people tell you they don't get told facts and figures they get told to go figure it out on their own and basically stop bothering you (when in point of fact I've offered repeatedly to do just that with a topic split I can't myself perform). Realizing it or not, that exclusivity creates a situation where someone gets marginalized. I should hope no one intends that result or you can see that I am obviously not shy and I will call them out on it.

Furthermore, some of those students you have on that field crew are students I mentored. So let me be clear. I am extremely unhappy when I see students in my chosen profession. A profession to which I have been an apprentice. To which I have clawed my way up in versus vast nonsense. I am extremely unhappy when I watch them get reduced to tears. I am tired of FIRST using them as reason why I should watch what I say.

I should like to point out that the very first e-mail I ever got in private from anyone on ChiefDelphi was Eric telling me to watch what I say because 40,000 students are watching. Yes they are and they need leadership and answers.

Some of you are their leaders. You dictate the limits of their tools (you certainly shot down my offer of a tool to which you have little alternate). You dictate the information and facts they are presented. I feel given the sheer lack of students in this topic (especially among those telling me to go away) that the leadership of this matter is using them as a shield. Not that you Al are doing so...but I see it all over the place. Where we tell people don't judge them so poorly. I am not judging those students, sometimes my students poorly. I am demanding they be given an environment that is never allowed to come to this end!

As to your finding a bad power component at one of your competitions, that is a known issue with a very small number of regulators. (a very few have been found defective from the factory) When questioned, most often the root cause is a team wiring issue that was later corrected by the team. For the record, that can take the form of the input and output of the regulator being swapped, the input or the output wiring reversed, the input to the radio reversed, or some of the wiring not fully insulated and shorting to the frame. As to other issues with robot radio, we have found the use of the wrong size coaxial plug (either the inside socket or the outside barrel or both), a team fix on a broken plug, a broken wire internal to the cable due to stress or bending, improperly applied hot glue that forced the connector open or un-soldered the power jack. More than half (~100 this year) of the power problems we find is teams wiring the radio directly to an unregulated 12 volt output on the PD. Other issues include blocking all the cooling holes in the radio, using damaged ethernet cables or after having broken a connector hot gluing same into an ethernet output on the radio. Mounting the radio upside down against a metal plate or mounting the radio on top of 2 CIMs in a transmission are also common. And finally teams mounting the radio deep inside the robot to "protect" it from harm.

So to repeat for everyone's homework, if you suspect a power issue with your robot radio, test and document the conditions under which the link fails. i.e. a power supply droop, noise (how much and what frequency), radio reboot or not, disabling of certain inputs or outputs, do you have a camera and does it stop working, does the robot stop after auto or after a specific length of time coming out of auto, etc. Make your findings public or send them to me, so others can duplicate the problem.

I would love to know, in a competition where I was one of the few examples of someone that brought an oscilloscope to a competition (a CRT unit at that).

In a competition where I had students that did not even know what the oscilloscope was nor it's application on the robot.

Considering that I offered test equipment for mounting on a moving robot, or even to open the door to using the cRIO which was shot down in the official FIRST Q&A forum after an unusually long delay.

How you figure that so many of the people you ask have the tools to deliver on your request?

Especially, again, when I point out that the tools to eliminate this issue on the active field...when it's the most disastrous they do not have. They can't even use the cRIO on the competition field as a data logger on that power supply.

Even if I show you what we already know. That power issues are the bottom of the troubleshooting tree and that we all admit they effect people. The point has and remains that what a robot does on my test field sometimes means nothing once I toss it in a bag. Ship it all over creation. Smack it into walls. Have pieces torn out of it by other robots accidentally and expose it to just general wear and tear.

The entire point of the monitors I created or even using the cRIO as a data logger on the D-link AP power supply was to prevent incidental damage as the result of wear and tear from blind siding teams that have otherwise done everything right and just don't realize the cumulative damage they are taking. We at Team 11 had no reason nor any approved method to track that damage. That's not unique to Team 11 at all. There's no approved method to get into that point while moving, and certainly no example I can find of anyone even load testing that supply and again I did ask openly in this very topic.

As far as your last paragraph above, I never said this was a non-issue. I said, in my experience I have not found any evidence that the power supply issues (that you suggest are occurring) have caused link issues. So far you haven't shown any evidence of this either. Your team found a defective regulator that for you and me is a smoking gun in your robot. That is a known problem, stated multiple times over the past two years by me (and many others) in several posts here on CD and in the LRI forum for all inspectors. For the record any problem is an issue for me. If you have one, the chances of someone else having it are good. However, I can only pursue problems if you can tell me what it is and repeat it. If you were closer I most certainly would suggest I spend a Saturday at your facility pursuing this.

Here's the thing Al. Unless someone tells me otherwise I'm going to Monty Madness with the tools I made to reduce the conflict on this issue...which perversely people have aligned to increase the conflict on these issues. I expect given the initial excitement that FIRST had when I mentioned what I created and was offering: that FIRST will give these monitors, that community electronic motor control and most especially LinuxBoy's projects a fair shake. I also expect that when teams ask FIRST to use a piece of approved hardware to monitor a system in a way that is inconsequential to it's function, but hugely consequential to the performance of the robot they'll let them do it even on a competition field.

I have every reason to believe based on the pattern I've been a personal witness to for the last week that I need to say that paragraph above publicly. I personally over a year ago offered to provide nearly the exact same thing LinuxBoy has been working on and the feeling I got personally was that I should go away. Do not do that to LinuxBoy, do not involve him in what seems to be an issue some of you have with me.