Problem with eStop CCI HID board

[sanddrag]

In one of oursemifinal matches at Los Angeles, we had a big problem with our eStop Robotics CCI HID board and USB driver. We tested via tether immediately adjacent to the playing field, every robot function works, just like it had every time before. We go to the field 30 seconds later and play the match, nothing works, completely dead. Turned out in that short amount of time, the Windows driver for the CCI board had crashed. Unplugging and replugging the USB "fixed" it, but by then it was too late. Field personnel had already rebooted the cRio, twice. We're using the Classmate E12 with the standard image.

It's extremely frustrating to have your robot sit motionless for an entire match, due to third-party hardware and software we have no control over. I can't blame it on a field fault, our design, our software, my students, anything. It was a pure bad luck glitch, which is the most frustrating part, because I have no fix other than "use a different HID device."

Since the Cypress PSoC has been discontinued (and it wasn't great either), the eStop board is virtually the only product to my knowledge that is geared for doing custom switch and analog inputs on an FRC control board. I really like the product, and I'm not here to bad-mouth it, but this one experience is one of those things I just can't have happen ever again.

FIRST has the "Innovation in Control" award, yet since the switch to a Windows PC as the driver station, and the discontinuation (and non-inclusion in the kit) of the Cypress board, we don't have a lot of options for innovation in control, on the operator side.