Field Glitch Caught on Camera

[orangemoore]

I was just watching a video from QF1-1 on the Archimedes field. The most interesting thing that I noticed other than the amazing match was a split second where the team numbers on the field turned from the real numbers to 0000. This really made me wonder what is happening with the FMS.

This is just an interesting picture, I thought I would share.
Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2EFDNlXnJQ
1:47-1:48 Field Glitch

[DampRobot]

I noticed the same thing. Could this be related to the teleop/auto switching but 254 saw at SVR? Or is something else in FMS just going of into the weeds?

[Aaron.Graeve]

I doubt that it has anything to do with the Auto-Teleop issue. The Team LED Lights are connected to the PLC in the Station Control Cabinet behind Driver Station 2. The robot communication traffic is routed through a managed switch that is also housed in the SCC, but does not interact with the PLC. As far as field Electronics mis-behaving, the Team LED's are probably the least concern possible.

Also, I was going through stills of the video and found one just after 1:48 that shows the field timer still working but the two Team LED displays are 0000. Since the LED displays are wired in series, I am wondering if a problem there may be the issue.

The person who would best be able to answer this is Matt Pilotte, FRC Electrical Engineer.

[Bryan Herbst]

I saw this on Galileo once as well, and we had a similar "issue" while setting up the field at 10,000 Lakes.

At 10k Lakes the cause was a bad cable running between two of the signs.

This typically isn't a symptom of an issue with the FMS. It could be a bad cable, or it could have gotten jostled in just the wrong way from a robot or a ball hitting the alliance station.

[Nick Lawrence]

This is generally caused by a bad cable or bad connector on the team LED displays. This likely isn't an FMS software problem.

-Nick

[Thad House]

I had been noticing issues with the displays all season long. It would do things like reset to 0000, then run 1111 through 9999 and then it would revert back to the real team number. I think the FMS this year had just a few too many bugs, and hopefully they are better next year. I would notice this multiple times at events.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence

This is generally caused by a bad cable or bad connector on the team LED displays. This likely isn't an FMS software problem.

-Nick

Correct. We had this at MSC and it was loose connectors. Not the FMS.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

This is just an interesting picture, I thought I would share.

Thanks for sharing.

Somewhat off-topic but worth mentioning: large photos should be posted as JPG, not PNG. The 1.8MB PNG file can be reduced to a small fraction of that size (~8%) as JPG, with very minimal reduction in perceived quality.

[Jared]

I saw this at Groton, Hartford, a few videos on TBA, and Curie. It happens when robot drive into the driver stations at high speeds. At Groton, a guy kept unplugging the ethernet cable to the driver station control box, and eventually replaced it.

[lgphoneeric]

We noticed this back in Utah after watching our GoPro videos. We asked a field tech and they said there was a known issue with the FMS running on the CRio in LabView that powers the stations. They told us it didn't effect the match only the displays, and that there was no solution to the problem. I know the Acchemidies field did it because it was the same field used in Utah.

[scca229]

Originally Posted by Thad House

I had been noticing issues with the displays all season long. It would do things like reset to 0000, then run 1111 through 9999 and then it would revert back to the real team number. I think the FMS this year had just a few too many bugs, and hopefully they are better next year. I would notice this multiple times at events.

The running from 0000-9999 is part of the self-test from the displays at power-on. Someone might have stepped on the power cable or something or just a flaky connection at the power strip. I had one display on the Phoenix field that was being a pain that I worked with when the same field was being set up in Las Vegas and turned out to be the connector was loose...tightened it up and it behaved for the event.

The displays have no actual bearing on the FMS other than showing to the participants/spectators who is in what station and the match timer, which it receives and sends nothing back. You can unplug them completely and the FMS wouldn't care...think like the clock not showing correctly at a football game and the time then being tracked using the Umpire's clock, which is the real official one at a football game anyway with the scoreboard one being for the crowd to see.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by lgphoneeric

We asked a field tech and they said there was a known issue with the FMS running on the CRio in LabView that powers the stations.

That sounds like meaningless babble. For one thing, the Field Management software does not run on a cRIO.

[scca229]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

That sounds like meaningless babble. For one thing, the Field Management software does not run on a cRIO.

For some reason I am thinking that I remember the SCC (the colorful box underneath driver station 2 on each end of the field) as having a cRIO at the heart (unless it is another box we used there last year for the Frisbee goals). The FMS itself, the Scorpion Case at the scoring table, does not.