Worried about high CPU usage in CRIO

[wireties]

There is a function called "spy" which one can run on the cRIO console. It will print CPU usage by task every 10 seconds. There is a problem with the spy utility though, it uses the auxiliary clock library in the OS to profile the system and I'm not sure if NI uses that timer/clock library for anything else - next time I am in our lab I will check. There is also a remote display of the nearly the same information when using Workbench in debug mode.

The watchdog goes off if it does not get "petted" regularly and the FRC comms code interprets this as a dangerous condition (thus the disabling of motors etc). 100% CPU usage is not a good sign but it does not automatically mean something is wrong. If the watchdog is going off you could being doing too much work serially (one right after another) in between messages from the DS. Try parallelizing your activities and prioritizing the comms with the DS. The watchdog alarms should go away and you'll be giving the camera all the "left over" time. Then slow down and/or simplify the camera code till utilization drops just below 100%.

HTH