[Tom Line]

This problem has now directly affected us and our regional.

Both the ethernet ports on our DS were fried. The first occurred the first day of the regional. We began using the second port at that time.

The second occurred AS the drive team was connecting to the field controls for our first elimination match. We had just tested the robot tethered in the pits. The control panel went directly to the driver station - and they couldn't get connection.

We were forced to remove the DS from our board and remove (12) PWM cables, fasten the new DS and reattach all 12 PWM cables in the time it took the robots to reboot. As a result, autonomous did not work. Two of the PWM cables did not make good connections. This allowed their human player to have their way with us. We lost by two points.

In the second match, the only thing that worked was the drivetrain joysticks. The turret joystick did not work, and none of the analog or digital inputs were sending signals. As a result we went the entire match without being able to score.

We will be grounding the robot from now forward AT ALL TIME if we are going to tether. Period. I strongly suggest other teams do the same.

We were told by field personnel that they had seen another (or more?) DS that had dead ethernet ports. Their guess was that the static discharge is being transferred down the ethernet cable from the robot while tethered.

Be careful and do everything you can to prevent it from happening to you.