New Ctrl Sys Early Ship - Benchtop Test

[rrossbach]

Hi -
We received our early shipment of the new control system today....just like Christmas a month early for the team!

We ran through the benchtop test procedure this afternoon, and all worked fine except for Auton mode - following the steps in the benchtop test doc, nothing happened when we enabled Auton mode. This is with the out-of-the-box firmware, image, etc on the cRIO and DS.

Has anyone else run into a similar problem? Trying to determine if this indicates a hardware defect (and we have to get a replacement from FIRST) or simply a problem with the default code that ships on the controller....

Thanks,
Ron

Team 2607 - Programming Mentor

[Mark McLeod]

Ours didn't follow the bench test expected outputs in all cases either.
I don't yet know if that's a real problem or an OTB version issue though.
We saw two discrepancies. One joystick didn't behave during teleop, and the first time we tried Auto nothing happened, but it did run for two seconds when we retried it.

We haven't dropped our own test program in yet to run a full verifiable test.
That's tomorrow for us.

[willson.thomas]

If everything worked up to that point and you're feeling lucky, I would just move on to flashing the DS and cRIO, then trying your own autonomous code. If that works, you should be just fine.

[Jon236]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Ours didn't follow the bench test expected outputs in all cases either.
I don't yet know if that's a real problem or an OTB version issue though.
We saw two discrepancies. One joystick didn't behave during teleop, and the first time we tried Auto nothing happened, but it did run for two seconds when we retried it.

We haven't dropped our own test program in yet to run a full verifiable test.
That's tomorrow for us.

Mark,

Our system behaved just as yours did out of the box. Once the software updates are downloaded to both cRio and DS, everything seemed to work well.

[rees2001]

Quick question.

Did auton run once & then not again?

[rrossbach]

No, the OTB auton didn't even run once. Tried it multiple times (rebooting both DS and cRIO) and even hooked up two Jaguars instead of Victors in case it was an "operable range" issue, to no avail.

The Jaguars are nice, btw. Control seems to be much smoother and a much wider operable range.

Thanks,
Ron

Team 2607 - Programming Mentor

[Greg McKaskle]

I don't believe that the autonomous code uses the motors at all. It simply strobes the solenoid module outputs something like a certain black car on TV.

Greg McKaskle

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

I don't believe that the autonomous code uses the motors at all. It simply strobes the solenoid module outputs something like a certain black car on TV.

P.S. Is it possible that you're thinking of the new software patch in FRCLabVIEWUpdate1.0, rather than the OTB?
That does cause a chase light sequence on the solenoid LEDs in autonomous.
-----

Then I think it's possible that at least two versions of the OTB shipped.
1) Autonomously strobe the solenoid lights
2) Autonomously work somewhat in accordance with the bench test description

We evidently got version 2, because there was no indicator light strobing, but autonomous did drive the pwm outputs several different ways.
With our version when the DS was booted into autonomous we saw one of these three different autonomous behaviors occur randomly intermixed.

1. pwm 2 goes full forward effectively forever all by it's lonesome self
2. Nothing happens and joystick 1 still controls the motors as in arcade teleop
3. pwm1-4 go full forward for 2 seconds

I'm just trying to figure out what to tell people at the local workshops.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Then I think it's possible that at least two versions of the OTB shipped...

I'm just trying to figure out what to tell people at the local workshops.

I suggest you tell them that there's a good reason for the software updates (i.e. the OTB code doesn't work exactly as desired) and that they shouldn't worry too much if the behavior before an update doesn't match the expected results perfectly.

[Greg McKaskle]

Sorry, my description was of what they are calling the default code for an installed image, not the OTB code. I don't have access to the code for OTB, so I can't tell you what it was supposed to do, but your description sounds familiar.

There were not two versions. OTB was what was burned onto the controllers at the factory. Default is what you'll have after a cRIO image update.

Greg McKaskle

[Mark McLeod]

You're just dedicated and overworked.

Take the day off, go eat some turkey and wait the parades.

You deserve it.

Thank you

[Bob Steele]

We received our kit yesterday... tried bench test last night.

I was wondering if anyone had a problem with tank drive vs arcade drive.
We could never seem to get tank drive (teleop and enabled)..no matter what we did we got arcade drive.

Is this an artifact of using the out of box software?

Anyone else see this happen?

Happy Thanksgiving...

[Mark McLeod]

If you get any response I'd consider it a successful bench test.
It just means all the parts from the DS to the motor are working together.

In OTB Teleop we only saw Joystick on USB 1 arcade action (w/button pressed) on pwms 1-4, neutral on pwms 5-10, no other button effects noted.

No response to a usb 2 joystick.

The jumpers in the prescribed positions did not affect results, but we didn't try all the other possible jumper positions.

If you add an Allen Bradley light to the hardware setup it won't come on either (but it works with the non-OTB default software update).

P.S.
Send my regards to Nataloia

[David Fort]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

....

1. pwm 2 goes full forward effectively forever all by it's lonesome self
2. Nothing happens and joystick 1 still controls the motors as in arcade teleop
3. pwm1-4 go full forward for 2 seconds

I'm just trying to figure out what to tell people at the local workshops.

That summarizes our experience too.
(except we didn't check PWM 2 and 3, and I'm willing to believe when it went for 2 seconds, it was only 50%, not full, which would be as "advertised". in the "full speed without any sign of stopping" case, I found that wiggling the joystick stopped it. But those details aside, I saw think I saw this also. )

[jaustin]

For what it's worth, we could not get Autonomous to work either. We did not understand what step 5 of 2.3.1.4 ("connnect a 2 pin jumper... to the sixth set of pins") was trying to tell us so we went back to the arcade drive pin config (ie jumper on the 5th set of pins). After we did that, auton mode worked exactly as adversized. Does any one know what the 6th set of jumper pins is supposed to do? Maybe it's a type-o in step 5?