[rspurlin]

perhaps this is too late to help your team but it may be of use to other teams with matches yet to play . . .

You begin by saying:
[blockquote]We start autonomous, our arm tries to launch prematurely[/blockquote]
I'm assuming that the arm was not supposed to move, yet did. There is nothing that I know of in the Field Management System that could cause such an error. It would be much more likely that your bot has a programming or wiring error.

The FMS basically acts as a wireless tether between your robot and your classmate/driver station, passing TCP/IP packets between the two. While doing so, it copies some basic data from the packets and writes them into a log every 100 ms or so. The scorekeeper can review these logs afterward to determine if your classmate ever lost communications with your robot. Other pertinent information is also recorded.

I'm also assuming that the scorekeeper or FTA looked at these logs before telling your team that nothing unusual was recorded there. If that is the case, you can pretty much rule out a field wiring issue or radio issue. Such things would usually cause problems for all teams on an alliance, or all teams, simultaneously. Even so, the scorekeeper would probably have noticed before you did.

Is there any evidence that other teams in the same station had problems? Did your team have any problems in any other match? Did your team change something since your last successful run? Is it possible your team had its wireless access point on in the pits or stands?

Good luck at tracking down the source of your problems.