Intermittent Loss of Communications During Play

[Mike Betts]

Al,

Although this has not been a big issue at events I have attended in the past, it was an issue at Florida this year. I had not really intended to air this issue on this forum but rather to focus my input to the RPC for next year.

Mike

[Greg McKaskle]

When I was pointing out issues that were also causing robots to be immobile in NJ, I wasn't attempting to associate any blame. I volunteered in week one to observe, collect common issues, diagnostics, and solutions. These were communicated to teams and to FIRST so that the various checklists and training could be improved. I wasn't a robot inspector, but was instead helping the CSA role, and Mark McCleod was doing the same.

Thanks for bringing very specific and helpful data on the connector to light. I didn't see it as often as other issues, but it may very well be because I didn't know to look.

I wasn't at an event this weekend. Is the mobility of robots improving? Are the issues getting resolved early? Is the field still catching blame for all sorts of mysterious stuff?

Greg McKaskle

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

When I was pointing out issues that were also causing robots to be immobile in NJ, I wasn't attempting to associate any blame...

Greg,

I never thought you were pointing fingers...

We caught a number of PD wiring errors in FL as well. This was largely due to having a large number of rookies and FIRST not emphasizing the importance of the power distribution diagram in the rules as they have in the past...

I would have hoped that the PD issue would br mitigated by Friday but I can understand how it might be overlooked...

Mike

[Al Skierkiewicz]

In reviewing some old email, I came across the references to the power saving mode on the Classmate being a problem. Is this loss of communications related to the power saving mode by any chance?

[Mark McLeod]

I haven't seen the same issues teams experienced last year with the Classmate XP sleep mode, but that can be due to the increase in laptop diversity making it less likely statistically.

With sleep mode there is a possibility that the USB joysticks/Cypress can get resorted and is something to check/verify when you wake it up.
Swapped controls can appear to the driver to be a lack of robot control.

I have also seen the problem from last year of overloading USB hubs with too many power hungry devices.
The devices either don't show up on the Setup tab or they show up but don't respond (they will turn blue when you press a button if they are working correctly).

[Joe Ross]

At the LA regional, several teams were using last years connector. The only team that I saw that didn't have consistent problems because of the old connector had their radio power cable in tension pulled to the side, which probably kept it from breaking contact in normal collisions. Teams that tried to electrical tape it tight were not successful.