Driver Station CONNECTION ERROR!

[Team DRIFT]

We are having trouble wirelessly connecting our rRIO to our dirver station.

We were able to image and format the rRIO using the new USB port, plus we could also run the code through the USB and flash it to the robot. We were also able to set up and configure our router and the IP settings. We are pretty sure we can connect to the router for we see the connection in the computer.

The issue is that the moment we disconect the USB, we lose connection. On the driver station diagnostics the DS radio light won't turn on. It suggests that we check power, configuration, and the cabling between the driver station and the router. We've tried all these, but it still won't work. We've tried connecting wirelessly to the router, through ethernet to the router, and we've even tried connecting directly through ethernet to the rRIO. None will work. We think that the issue is in the ethernet port on the rRIO.

We would very much appreciate any knowledge regarding this topic.

[Dexterium]

Have you configured the IP settings on the roboRIO? Not just on the router.

[RufflesRidge]

Originally Posted by Dexterium

Have you configured the IP settings on the roboRIO? Not just on the router.

The roboRIO imaging tool takes care of this. The roboRIO should work fine in DHCP if the radio is programmed using this year's Bridge Configuration Utility.

Did you program the radio with this year's utility as described in the documentation or did you configure it manually?

[thatnameistaken]

Can you connect to the RoboRIO web interface over the network? If so, the issue could very likely be that your firewall is blocking the driver station.

[Team DRIFT]

Thanks for Your help guys. Someone on NI suggested that we try pinging it using the IP which is roboRIO-1234.local, where 1234 is the team number. This would verify that the IP is set to what it should be and that we are connecting. We were able to successfully ping it wirelessly, so the issue is not in connecting to the roboRIO. We even turned of the firewall just to be sure.We definitely have wireless communication with our rRIO. It seems that the problem is that the Driver Station can't recognize the rRIO signal. How might we fix this?

For now we'll probably just try reinstalling the Driver Station, although it doesn't make much sense because we have another computer we tried the exact same thing on and the connection works, but the Driver Station still won't recognize it.

[Alan Anderson]

Are you using this year's Driver Station software? What is the version number in the DS window's title bar?

[Team DRIFT]

Yes, we are using the new Driver Station (version 15.0 - it looks different from last year's).

[Alan Anderson]

If you can successfully ping the roboRIO, it probably isn't a hardware problem. Have you made sure your computer's network interface is set to DHCP? The IP address shouldn't matter, but the netmask and default gateway might be confusing things.

[frc4027_mentor]

We had a similar issue. I fixedit tonight by disabling the firewall in Norton Antivirus. I could ping 10.40.27.22, but the roboRIO-4027.local alias would not work, effectively not allowingthe DS to connect. Disabling the firewall solved our problems. Able to ping the alias now and the DS now finds the robot and allows us to enable the RIO.

[Team DRIFT]

Thank You all very much for the suggestions. We have already disabled our firewall, and we know that our computer settings are right because yesterday we were able to connect to another team's robot with a lot of ease, by just changing the team number on our computer.

Does this even make sense? Everything seems to work, except it doesn't...

[Greg McKaskle]

If I were there, these are the steps I'd take.

Please change the team number on the DS setup tab back to your teams.
Power everything up.
On the laptop, check to see what wifi access point your laptop is connected to. If needed, choose the robot and set it to reconnect when available.
Launch the DS and serif the robot show up as communicating.
If not, click to the Diagnostics tab and see what the Communications LEDs look like. The one you care about is the robot.

If it doesn't work, please indicate what you see at the different steps and anything that seemed troubling.

If the wifi seems to be the issue, you may try plugging an ethernet cable from the laptop to the DLink.

It may also be useful to open the control panel or the command line on the laptop and see what IP you have for the interfaces. The DLink should be handing out ones based on your team number. ifconfig will give about the right amount of info for us to be able to help you out.

Greg McKaskle

[Team DRIFT]

Thanks for all Your help, guys. I have good news. We finally figured it out. It turns out that our bridge configuration utility was either downloaded wrong or an older version (I wasn't in charge of the downloads, so I'm not sure which). We were able to use the other team's configuration utility and it worked perfectly. We just transferred the software they used via USB and we now have a working bridge utility, and more importantly, a working robot. Thanks for all the help!