Things learned from the 2012 regional

[daniel_dsouza]

Hello CD,

I would like to know what you learned about the control system and FMS from your regional experience this season. It would be great to have all those little tricks be common knowledge.

One trick is that after you tether your robot, you should power cycle it before competing to prevent potential connection problems.

Another trick is to not let things short out that are attached to the control system.
Example: Our robot hit the field hard our first match, and as a result, two wires touched, shorting our our bridge momentarily. For the next two matches, either just the auton code or no code would run. Now what we thing happened is that the short messed up our memory on the cRIO. According to our mentor, memory messup would prevent our team from running updated versions of our code. We tried everything from power cycles to reimaging everything. In the end, we had to rewrite all our code in a completely different way, so that the programs would be different enough, and would compile differently enough. The same thing also happened to another team.

What have you learned?

[rsisk]

Don't put zip ties around the radio that might switch it into AP mode

Use the barrel connector that came with the radio, finding a good fit otherwise is hard and may cause power loss to the radio

30 sec comm loss usually means cRIO reboot
>45 sec comm loss usually means radio reboot

Make sure your driver station is set to the proper ip address (10.xx.yy.5) and subnet mask (255.0.0.0). This way if the Driver Station software cannot set it for some reason, you still run.

Make sure Windows Firewall is OFF

Make sure ALL network connections except for Local Area Network are disabled

Make sure DEVELOPER is logged off and you are logged into DRIVER (on classmate images)

Make sure you have ADMINISTRATOR privileges (non classmate images) so DS software can configure your network.

If at all possible, let the DS software configure your network.

Turn your robot on before taking it onto the field (assuming it is safe to do so) to allow ample time to connect to field.

Make sure all ethernet connections are tight and stay tight including the ones to the driver station and the one between radio and cRIO

Sometimes switching the ethernet port on the radio will solve a comm problem

Use an ethernet pigtail on your driver station. Much cheaper to replace when they break or wear out than the ethernet port on the computer. They were available thru First Choice this year.

If you can, use the Classmate computer as your driver station and only as the driver station. Do not load other software, play games, mess with the configuration or anything else on it.

Un-terminated loops in autonomous are a bad thing.

Bent pins in the cRIO can cause unexplainable problems.

Electrically isolate your cRIO and camera, mount on wood, then mount wood to frame for example.

Simple code is so much easier to debug under pressure. If something is not giving you a competitive advantage, don't do it.

Do not plug ANYTHING into the field electronics unless the FTA has given you EXPLICIT permission. Found a few unauthorized things left behind in LA.

The FTA, FTAA, Field Supervisor, and CSA do their best to make sure your experience is positive. Work with them. Make sure to have accurate details about your issues, don't jump to the conclusion a problem is with the field (before you do, ask yourself if other robots are running fine, why is your robot the only one the field treats differently).

Double check your wiring against the electrical drawings in the manual, make sure it is correct.

Try running with default code to help eliminate software problems.

[fovea1959]

The CSA is there to help. Use him/her, and advise other teams to do the same. A lot of sophomore teams I talked to over the weekend had no idea that the CSA was available to them....

[rsisk]

The Control System Adviser wears an ORANGE hat and can be found in the pits or near the field at the competition.

[lorem3k]

PLEASE turn off all Wi-Fi networks. There were a ton of comm. issues on-field at GTRW this year because of peoples' networks that they had to go around with a sniffer to find who ran them and get people to shut them down.

[Suitster]

Use tape to secure the ethernet cable to the driver's station so a bumping the laptop won't make you lose connection

[Alexa Stott]

One rule that my team always, always has: Whenever you do ANY sort of work on the robot (particularly anything involving drilling/cutting/whatever), ALWAYS vacuum out the robot. A metal shard in your cRIO is the LAST thing you want.

[lorem3k]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

One rule that my team always, always has: Whenever you do ANY sort of work on the robot (particularly anything involving drilling/cutting/whatever), ALWAYS vacuum out the robot. A metal shard in your cRIO is the LAST thing you want.

When we're working in the shop and drilling, grinding, or cutting anything, we grab a fire blanket and cover our electronics with it to prevent shards from getting in