Watchdogs

[Ian McShane]

Now watchdogs are virtual right? how do you program them.

[Alan Anderson]

In the context of FRC and the 2011 software, the watchdog is there to keep your robot from going out of control due to loss of communication. It is all automatic. You don't do anything to program it.

The motor safety feature is sort of a minor watchdog that will help keep your robot from going out of control if you fail to set the drive motor values every tenth of a second. You should never need to "program" it. If you really know what you are doing, you can disable the safety feature to make certain programming patterns possible. If you're extra paranoid, you can enable the safeties on motors other than drive motors. But there's no reason for you to do anything with the safeties other than make sure you keep it happy by controlling the motors on a regular basis.

[Ian McShane]

oooooooohhhhhhhh...well that is handy.