[Radical Pi]

Originally Posted by kylelanman

Al, Do you by chance recall which teams were because of dead classmate batteries? We didn't have a USB hub so I would assume one of them was us but I also know that team 1736 let us use there fully charge classmate battery because First did not provide a way (that we were aware of) to charge the classmates during the final matches. I recently found out about the inverter option with a spare robot battery.

as an FYI the frc director's blog got a post today that said power strips are now available in the queue for charging the classmate while waiting for the match.

Originally Posted by kylelanman

The reason I want to know how the comm status is determined is because there are multiple network connection between the classmate, FMS, and the robot. I fully understand a robot radio loosing comms is our fault. There are a countless number of things that could cause this. If the classmate battery is fully charged, ethernet cable securely connected and the classmate looses comms to the FMS I would have to blame the field/arena. The classmate is an unmodified (software and hardware) product from First so nothing the team does aside from the previously mentioned network cable being plugged in properly would influence the comms between the classmate and the FMS. If I am wrong here correct me.

According to rspurlin the FMS indicators are pulled from the classmate. I'd assume that those are used to determine communication, as well as an extra indicator for classmate communication. Also you should remember that the FMS is a fairly big thing. There are multiple fault points, however most of them would cause widespread failures.

One more thing out of curiosity: In the event that a ball is scored and properly returned on the ball return, however the return sensor fails and doesn't detect the ball, does the scorekeeper have a way to manually override the DOGMA penalties to keep the game from killing an alliance for a field error? Also, what happens if there is the reverse, a ball is missed by the ball counter and is caught by the ball return. Any idea how the system handles this?