Watchdog not being fed

[Kevin Sevcik]

I agree that you don't seem to be using the watchdog anywhere. While there's a Watchdog that's a member of the SimpleRobot class you derive from, the SimpleRobot constructor disables it by default. You have to actively enable it for it to do something. If you're really sure that's the problem, you can call GetWatchdog to get it, or simply access it directly at m_watchdog. If you put m_watchdog.SetEnabled(false) in your constructor, that'll guarantee it's disabled.

On the other hand, your buttons for driving the robot forward,backward, etc. for a fixed amount of time will definitely cause problems and MotorSafetyHelper errors. Putting a Wait() in your OperatorControl while loop is a really bad idea, because it stops everything else and waits. It's also not likely to do what you want.

If you have MotorSafety enabled, then your robot drive is expecting a new TankDrive or ArcadeDrive or somethingDrive command every 0.1 seconds. If you don't update it, MotorSafety will disable that motor until you command it again. So you give it that TankDrive(-.3,-.3) command, then wait 2 seconds with a command, which kills your motor, then you command it (0,0).

On the other hand, if you have MotorSafety disable, everything else keeps doing what it was doing just before you hit that button. If your armmotor was going down and you hit the backup button, that armmotor is going to keep going down for two seconds, limit switch or no.

So mostly, you shouldn't be using a Wait() in your OperatorControl loop.

[rich2202]

What is the alternative to Wait? That is what we have been using to release CPU time to other threads. So far, we have not had a problem. Although, we use wait only at the bottom of the code, not inside the code. We use timers for that.