Jaguars Slow Yellow Blink - Possible Control System Issue

[MikeDubreuil]

I turned on the robot and the 2 jaguars are slowly blinking- I know "Loss of servo link." Except, the connections are tight and I am fairly certain they are correct.

The DS status:
Team: 1337
Mode: Teleoperated
System: Enabled
Battery: 12.3 V
DS Rev: 2008-10-29a

cRIO:
Power LED Green

Digital Side Car:
RSL Solid Green (changes to blinking green when disable switch on DS is toggled)

Jaguars:
Slow orange blink in unison

I then systematically re-powered everything:

1. DS (issue still excibited)
2. DS and Wireless Router (issue still exhibited)
3. Reboot robot (issue still exhibited)

I then came over to the PC to post this message. After about 10 mins I went back to the robot.
A.) The RSL was slow blinking the Jaguars were slow blinking in unison.
B.) The DS said "System: Enabled" and "Battery: No Code"

I re-powered the robot and everything is fine and working.

What's going on? Is there a known issues document?

[Mark McLeod]

It goes against my grain to say this but that's a software problem not a hardware problem.
(Never trust a DS Rev from October 39, 2008)

It probably comes down to what what was running in the cRIO at what time.

(RSL: solid, jaguar: blink) I'd say that at first what was running on the cRIO code didn't properly enable the PWM outputs you had the Jaguars hooked to.

(RSL: blink, DS: No code) Second, the code eventually failed to maintain the watchdog, or just plain ended execution.

Everything fine and working, the startup code seems to be fine, but you may have a timing condition that leaves a window for the Watchdog to fail and PWMs to fail to initialize.
Are you running parallel processes as in independent LabVIEW loops that could cause synchronization issues where something can get used before it's been properly initialized?

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

It goes against my grain to say this but that's a software problem not a hardware problem.
(Never trust a DS Rev from October 39, 2008)
...
Everything fine and working, the startup code seems to be fine, but you may have a timing condition that leaves a window for the Watchdog to fail and PWMs to fail to initialize.
Are you running parallel processes as in independent LabVIEW loops that could cause synchronization issues where something can get used before it's been properly initialized?

HaHa, thanks. The DS rev is 2008-10-29a.

The part that it might be a software problem also concerns me... I haven't modified the default code very much. I made a "Basic Robot" project in LabVIEW and changed the Arcade Drive in TeleOp to Tank Drive. I've also set the autonomous conditional to allow it to run.That's it. Here is a link to my code if anyone is interested.

[MikeDubreuil]

I have started a thread on the FIRST forum to get additional support.