Replacing cRIO

[JohnBoucher]

Have you replaced your cRIO? If so why?

Failed unit?
Age?
Other reasons?

[MamaSpoldi]

Team 230 has replaced 2 cRIOs this season:

1). It was fried (likely by metal shavings dropped in from "above" ). NI shipped us a replacement overnight!

2). The second cRIO which was a backup we have was replaced after the Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage where we spent the entire day trying to establish communications with the help of the FTAs and everyone else there. That cRIO had been capable of communications using the old bridge from 2009 but would not connect up to the DLink. When we got our first replacement cRIO it connected flawlessly... and then we had to have some discussions with NI to get the 2nd cRIO replaced.

Note that I can't be sure which was which, but we had purchased one as a replacement for a "lost" system in late March/early April of 2009 and I believe the other was purchased in November/December of 2009 in preparation for the 2010 season.

So... I guess I would say that they were both replaced because they failed.

[Taylor]

We replaced ours because it got rained on. After working intermittently for about six months, it finally lost power.

[Christopher149]

We purchased a second cRIO because we damaged the ethernet port that the radio connects to while driving in our shop (we can't do wireless because there is to much other radio traffic there). It still works...but only by very carefully plugging in a cable. The *broken* one will probably be used for a practice bot.

[plnyyanks]

A few years ago, we replaced one because it had come with bent pins where the modules connect. We sent it back, and NI sent us a new one pretty quickly.

[Andy A.]

We had one die at GSR this year. A loaned unit got us through he rest of the day and we replaced it with our back up for Palmetto.

I've since repaired the dead one. The 2amp internal fuse had opened, and once replaced it functioned fine. It's a surface mount type and was in a frustratingly difficult location, but finally came out. I don't know why it failed, but things seem okay now. It should do fine for testing and off season development.

[biancs15]

We have replaced one C-Rio this year.

At GTR we were losing communications during the match, and we thought it had to do with a malfunctioning cRIO constantly re-booting. So obviously, we replaced it. It turned out not to be our cRIO, but a banebots motor

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

I've since repaired the dead one. The 2amp internal fuse had opened, and once replaced it functioned fine. It's a surface mount type and was in a frustratingly difficult location, but finally came out. I don't know why it failed, but things seem okay now. It should do fine for testing and off season development.

I'm curious why you went to so much trouble, rather then have NI repair it.

[bdbayes]

Where can I find information about getting a cRIO replaced?

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by bdbayes

Where can I find information about getting a cRIO replaced?

From https://decibel.ni.com/content/commu...iew=overview#/

Want to talk to someone? Call (866) 511-6285 from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time for:

* cRIO repair
* Purchase extra cRIOs for your team, or you can...

[Mk.32]

We recently just brought a 2nd CRIO from NI with the FIRST discount as a backup and for use on our test robot.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I'm curious why you went to so much trouble, rather then have NI repair it.

I did that kind of rework for a living, for a while. Part of me wanted to see if I still had the hand for it. Seemed like a fun project at the time. The initial thought was that the problem was metal chips that might have worked into the housing. Once I had the board out I just kept going.

[11douglash]

Yeah. We have. Once.

Two years ago, ours fried during build. due to an unknown cause. We were very careful with ESD, and the coders were re-formatting it very frequently in the days before it died. Either way, we were somewhat sure it wasn't out fault, but we can't be 100% shure.

We called up NI, explained to them that we are a FIRST team, and explained to them the situation. They swapped out our old one for a new one, as they wanted to take apart the cRIO to figure out what really went wrong with it. If it really was code, they want to know.

Unfortuantly, it took nearly a week to ship. You can be shure that we now have a spare cRIO on hand during build.

[Billfred]

We think we will need to do something with ours in the postseason. It stopped getting power Saturday morning at Peachtree, and we've been using loaner units since. (That said, we experienced symptoms that indicate our cRIO was losing power after hard hits during the Palmetto eliminations. We'll be diagnosing that in St. Louis.)

[EthanMiller]

Ours fried after FLR last year. NI replaced it quickly. We're not sure the cause - it looked electrical, happened while the robot was driving, and nothing was touching the cRIO. Personally, I suspect static electricity may have gotten there somehow.