THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Team23pitboss

We functioned normally for the entirety of the competition and had not experienced any previous failures.

This actually sounds EXACTLY like the situation that much of the Einstein report pointed out, as well as several other teams noted during the season. The most well known of these probably being 118. They functioned "completely normally" until the elims in CT. They also functioned "completely normally" until Einstein. Again, I reference the Einstein report. I highly suggest you go and read pages 12-13 [and really the rest of it, but specifically those pages if you don't want to learn from the whole thing].

And I appreciate that different people have different senses of humor, and that your graphics should have indicated your tone of sarcasm... but as the saying goes "TOO SOON...TOO SOON".

[arun4444]

We had problems also with all robots shutting down and having to play a rematch.

Not sure why frc still uses wifi, should move to independent channel RF.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by thinker&planner

We had to reduce the resolution of our camera because the control system was delaying so much that we accidentally fell over.

What?!?!

[Alpha Beta]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

A few times titanium was spinning in auto in Elims as well...

From what I've seen this is sort of a popular failure...why I wonder do all the robots react like that?

Our spinning was due to a failed battery. We had 2 separate instances in elims where batteries showed 13 volts on the charger and dropped to 6 volts within seconds during autonomous.

To the best of my knowledge we had no problems with the FMS in Hub City.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm told many problems at Lone Star were caused by multiple teams trying to run cameras at 640x480 at 30fps. Or in one case, TWO cameras at that rate. Teams have been instructed to throttle down to 320x240 @ 15fps and things have calmed down a good bit.

I thought bandwidth caps were in place...?

[Team23pitboss]

batteries showed 13 volts on the charger and dropped to 6 volts within seconds during autonomous.

Out of curiosity did you ever figure out why the batteries behaved in such a strange way?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Jared341

I thought bandwidth caps were in place...?

I can only tell you what the FTA mentioned to me in passing. I'll note that he didn't say and I didn't say that the cameras were causing issues for teams other than the ones running the cameras.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Team23pitboss

Out of curiosity did you ever figure out why the batteries behaved in such a strange way?

This is almost always a failed cell in the battery - or many failed cells.

We use the West Mountain battery tester to test our batteries. We found several this year that had normal voltages initially, checked good on our battery beak, but fell off after 5-10 minutes of testing fairly sharply.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

This is almost always a failed cell in the battery - or many failed cells.

We use the West Mountain battery tester to test our batteries. We found several this year that had normal voltages initially, checked good on our battery beak, but fell off after 5-10 minutes of testing fairly sharply.

On the one hand I want one of these. On the other hand I don't want to spend the money. Maybe I'll spend some time this offseason working out some software to use a Black Jaguar and some power resistors as a poor man's version of this.

[SGK]

Buzz's dance was not due to FMS. Due to possible programming issue plus the fact that we had to keep safety pins in to keep the feeder up ans therefore within starting envelope. We did not have enough pressure in the system after the last match and refs would not let us power up to recharge.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Maybe I'll spend some time this offseason working out some software to use a Black Jaguar and some power resistors as a poor man's version of this.

Hmm. You've got me curious. Can you give a general idea of what you have in mind? Is the purpose of the Jag to allow you to record data (via CAN) and shut off automatically so you don't have to babysit it?

[stingray27]

Originally Posted by Team23pitboss

I really hope I'm wrong but it looks to my untrained eyes like the FMS could possibly be as unstable as it was last season. I have already watched multiple robots begin to spin wildly mid-match while watching the Florida and Texas streams. If you don't already know Team 23's season was brought to an end by a round loss due to a possible FMS malfunction in the quarter-finals last season and the team has been especially wary of a repeat of this ever since. Do you think the FMS will be an issue as it was for some teams last year and if it is what can FIRST do about it?
http://s1.postimage.org/y2y5izgy5/Not_0a1d39_92289.gif

Team RUSH 27 ran into Smart Dashboard issues at Northern Lights that spammed our cRIO and ran our processing to over 100%. Blame was originally on 7Mbps but after further investigation, NI advisors suggested it may be an issue with the smart dashboard itself. This caused major issues that hindered our robot for 3 matches. Any other issues similar?

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by Team23pitboss

Out of curiosity did you ever figure out why the batteries behaved in such a strange way?

They were simply failing batteries/cells that managed to emerge at the worst possible time. You can be sure we are taking measures to ensure that does not happen again.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Ether

Hmm. You've got me curious. Can you give a general idea of what you have in mind? Is the purpose of the Jag to allow you to record data (via CAN) and shut off automatically so you don't have to babysit it?

Black Jags are serial controllable and have current control modes plus built voltage and current feedback. So all you would need for a battery tester is a serial port (or USB-Serial adapter), a serial to Jaguar adapter, a Black Jaguar that most every FRC team has 1 of, and a power resistor you can get at Mouser or your local electronics surplus store. Battery on the input side, power resistor on the output side, tell the Jag to dump X amps into the resistor, then record and plot your feedback. Primary difficulty is making the program to control the Jaguar. Either I'd need to figure out how to generate the FRC heartbeat, or you'd have to flash the Jag with custom firmware.

[Alan Anderson]

I remember one work session where a robot decided to "spin out" as soon as it was enabled. It did not respond to any control inputs. The cause turned out to be a disconnected gamepad. Pressing F1 on the Driver Station brought things back to normal.