Field Issues

[tr6scott]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Radios:Driver Station:[list][*]Wrong rev. Must be this year. Either 01.05.11.00 or 02.27.11.00 are fine. Older ones mean your robot will never link to the field.

At Kettering, eventhough 1.05.11 was supposed to be fine, it was found only 2.27.11 worked with field.

all classmates had to be flashed to 2.27.11, there was one flashdrive with the firmware in the building and no open wifi to the internet.

There was many factors to the 3-4 hour delay we experienced on Friday, this was one of them.

Robot inspection was passed on Thursday with 1.05.11 firmware, shown to not work on Friday.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Mark, can you explain this entry in more detail?

What he means is: The 12 Volt WAGO output at the end of the PDB supplies the 12-5V converter, which then powers the radio.

At NJ we saw many teams powering the 5V converter from regular 12 V breakered connections, and several powering their radio from the 5V PDB output. All bad.

As for week 1 problems, as a spectator I can say there were FAR fewer problems than in recent memory. FIRST seems to have done their homework this year. Of course it helps to have Pete K as the FTA...

[TPNigl]

Yea, I'm seconding the whole 02.27.11.00 thing. 01.05.11.00 was fine on practice day, but they had everyone move to 02.27.11.00 by the first day of comp.

Also, at least for java users, update netbeans so that it matches the new cRIO image. We had a very unofficial way of fixing ours w/o internet (our programming mentor used hacking skills). Try to fix it in a better way though if possible, haha

[Mark McLeod]

Interesting, but that sounds like a "it couldn't hurt" solution, rather than a required one.

At NJ most teams ran with 01.05.11.00.
The 2/27 version is identical, except in how it handles changes to IP settings, only noticeable on a small number of laptops, but maybe you had a lot of those if local teams all purchased the same third-party laptop on sale.
At NJ, we did upgrade a few driver stations with the newest edition.

Of course, since it couldn't hurt, upgrading to the 2/27 version is probably a good idea anyway.

Originally Posted by tr6scott

At Kettering, even though 1.05.11 was supposed to be fine, it was found only 2.27.11 worked with field.

all classmates had to be flashed to 2.27.11, there was one flashdrive with the firmware in the building and no open wifi to the internet.

There was many factors to the 3-4 hour delay we experienced on Friday, this was one of them.

Robot inspection was passed on Thursday with 1.05.11 firmware, shown to not work on Friday.

[rrossbach]

Some additional detail based on my observations at Trenton (thanks Mark for the great list!)

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Radios:

• ...
• When setting the WPA, plug in Ethernet before power.
• ...

To expand on the situation behind this - the WPA configuration kiosk apparently has sporadic problems and will report a "failure to configure IP, wrong operating system" error (or something like that - can't remember the exact wording, sorry!). Usually the bridge will still be configured OK, but better safe than sorry. Hopefully the word can get out to the other regional volunteers so everyone knows the correct kiosk procedure is to plug in ethernet 1st, then power 2nd.

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Driver Station:

• Wrong rev. Must be this year. Either 01.05.11.00 or 02.27.11.00 are fine. Older ones mean your robot will never link to the field.
• ...

To expand on this, using DS Rev 01.05.11.00 but having multiple IP addresses configured on the network adapter will also mean your robot will never link to the field. I think this is what jhersh meant when he euphemistically explained that DS rev 02.27.11.00 would "ease proper configuration of the driver station laptop's IP configuration (making you more likely to successfully connect to the field)." Prior to rev 02.27.11.00, setting the team number in the DS config just set the additional IP for your team without getting rid of any additional pre-existing IP addresses that may have been configured.

Several teams at the Trenton regional found this out the hard way when they borrowed Classmates from spare parts - the spare parts classmates all had DS rev 01.05.11.00, and also had an existing IP of 10.0.0.5. - so any team using a spare parts Classmate could not connect to the field initially.

Again, better safe than sorry - probably best not to consider DS rev 02.27.11.00 "optional".

Huge thanks to all the Trenton volunteers but especially Mark, "NI Greg", "NI Ben", and "FTA Pete" for all the hard work!

- Ron
Team #2607 controls mentor

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by rrossbach

To expand on this, using DS Rev 01.05.11.00 but having multiple IP addresses configured on the network adapter will also mean your robot will never link to the field.

It can be an issue for teams who switch their IPs around a lot, or if you borrow a laptop from another team or Spare Parts.
That's why the vast majority of teams won't see this.
It'll only cause a problem the first time you go to use it.
If you connected at least once before by tether in the pits then you're good and it won't crop up later or anything.

The way to tell if this was happening to you is pretty simple.
The symptoms are: the Driver Station can't see the robot on tether.

If you check your IP settings use the Advanced button down at the bottom (1st attached image), and you'll get a list of the IPs associated with that network adaptor. Just delete the extras that shouldn't be there leaving you with one IP address as in the 2nd attached image.

-------
Hey Ron,

Want to report on the CAN bus issues you debugged?
That's useful for teams to know, too.

[rrossbach]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

If you connected at least once before by tether in the pits then you're good and it won't crop up later or anything.

-------
Hey Ron,

Want to report on the CAN bus issues you debugged?
That's useful for teams to know, too.

Hey! Yep, will probably take another day or two before the students and I finish pouring over all the runtime data we collected. Preliminarily it looked like stray CANBus exceptions would cause FRC_NetworkCommunication to block, and therefore cause FMS<->DS<->Robot comms issues whenever stray CANBus exceptions would occur - but now looking at all the data we're not sure if this is the case. I told Greg we'd write everything up and send to him and Joe for review.

Quick question on the DS tethering - the students say they were able to tether successfully with the borrowed Classmate and "multiple IP" situation before going on the field......they would have done that to charge the pneumatics since we have an off-board compressor this year. So I'm wondering if the multiple IP problem is a cRIO issue, or an FMS issue?

Anyway, safest procedure is just to check the IP settings!

- Ron
Team #2607 controls mentor

[rcflyer620]

I watched Trenton all weekend and tracked who won on which side of the field. This is my third year as an FTAA at Chesapeake and it seems like evey year someone complains that one side of the field is favored. I can tell you this was not the case at Trenton. It was very nearly a 50/50 split. Hopefully that holds up at Chesapeake!

[SarahB]

In addition to checking your firmware version (10.10.22.0 = bad), make sure that your IP is set correctly. It should be 10.xx.yy.5 with a subnet mask 255.0.0.0, where xx is the first two numbers of your team number and yy is the last two numbers of your team number. So team 229 would be 10.2.29.5. Also check to make sure you only have one IP address assigned to your DS and that your wireless is disabled. Checking all these things on every driver station at FLR helped us resolve the problems the teams were having connecting to FMS.

All of these things can be checked by logging into the Developer account on your Classmate then running ncpa.cpl. From there, right click on the wireless connection and select Disable if that option is available then right click on the wired connection and select Properties. In the pop up that opens click on IPv4 then click the Properties button. The Properties window will display the current IP address which you can edit if necessary. Once your IP is correct, click the advanced button and delete any extra IPs.

It also helps if the venue doesn't have WiFi that interfears with the field as we learned after 10+ hours of trying to get