How do you simulate start of a match?

[Bpk9p4]

We are wanting to test to make sure that are robot will opporate perfectly at the start of a match. Does anyone know how you can simulate a match so it is the same as an official frc match?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Practice mode on your Driver Station is a pretty good simulation. Click practice mode, then enable, and you robot will run through 15 seconds of autonomous and 2 min of teleop.

[Greg McKaskle]

The driver station has a mode called Practice. It runs through the same modes as the field. You can adjust this on the Setup page. It is a great test, one which I encourage all teams to complete. Probably 20% of all issues I see as a CSA where teams robots didn't behave correctly on the field are reproducible using Test mode and therefore shouldn't have to wait until an event to encounter the issue.

Greg McKaskle

[Bpk9p4]

Thanks for the help. Last year we had lots of small problem with communications at official matchs. Hopefully this will fix all those problems. Any other suggestions to prevent communication issues during matches?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Mount your radio far from noisy things like speed controllers and motors. Also, stick a zip-tie mount to the radio and zip-tie the power cable to your radio so it isn't being pulled around and loosened as your robot is getting banged into during a match.

[Greg McKaskle]

I'd use a practice match to verify that the SW transitions as it is supposed to.

I'd use the buddy system to review power connections go to the correct PD circuit. For example, make sure that the cRIO and radio are connected to the dedicated terminals on the end of the PD. The robot will not fail immediately if wired wrong, but will typically fail when the battery gets drained a bit and you stall the motors pushing another robot or a wall.

Jiggle and wiggle the power wires to the cRIO and the radio. Do this at both ends -- PD and device. This will help catch issues with shorts and opens that will occur when the robot is bumped.

Test your batteries and ensure that your recharge process won't send you to the field with a partial charge. Also consider the process for the driving laptop power.

Write up a checklist, either paper or in the dashboard, and review it with the team. Include elements like making sure that the battery is connected, ethernet is connected, code is deployed, etc.

From my time as a CSA, these items account for 80 or 90% of robot failures on the field. Yes, there are some mysterious issues with wifi, routers, firmware variations, and bugs in WPILib, but they are a small portion of what FTA and CSA help with.

Gre gMcKaskle