E-Stop Lag... now part of our arm is broken

[Greg McKaskle]

I know that the arm damage has probably put you behind schedule, but please try to check things out to see what does and doesn't work and to verify you can trust the safety systems.

1. E-Stop the robot. The buttons aren't the most robust things, and if yours is broken, toss it. As mentioned, hitting spacebar disables the robot and is good to teach in addition or instead.

2. Break communications with the robot by pulling the enet cable on the cRIO. The outputs should stop due to the system watchdog.

3. Review code looking for logic issues that could lead to a wild value being computed.

4. Examine the digital breakout. In the very rare cases I've heard of where a robot moved even when disabled, it was due to a fused digital breakout board that didn't disable digital lines properly. I don't remember the exact issue, but it was a damaged board. That doesn't make sense with a PWM signal, but verify the board looks good anyway.

Please let us know if you see anything else that looks flaky, anything else that needs a close inspection or additional testing.

Greg McKaskle