Robot Restart and Reset Issues

[virtuald]

If I were to guess at this problem without looking at your code, I would say it has something to do with how you're dealing with time. In particular, this sounds like a system that doesn't allow 'missed frames', and tries to catch up to where it wanted to be, so it keeps executing them until it's caught up.

After looking at it, I noticed that your Updater thing uses a Timer.scheduleAtFixedRate, which looks like it might have a behavior similar to what I'm describing.

"If an execution is delayed for any reason (such as garbage collection or other background activity), two or more executions will occur in rapid succession to "catch up." In the long run, the frequency of execution will be exactly the reciprocal of the specified period (assuming the system clock underlying Object.wait(long) is accurate). As a consequence of the above, if the scheduled first time is in the past, then any "missed" executions will be scheduled for immediate "catch up" execution."

That sounds exactly like what's happening.

[virtuald]

After thinking some more, one thing that ties into this, is that the RoboRIO doesn't have a battery holding the system's time. So when your RoboRIO starts up it thinks the time is... some time in the past. Maybe an hour, maybe a day, who knows.

However, when the DS connects to your roboRIO, the time is synchronized to the DS's time. So time all of a sudden goes from 0 to 1 billion something.

If your code started before the DS synchronized time, then the fixed time delay mechanism would kick in and try to 'catch up'.

There's a few ways to fix this. One way that pops into my head is only start your updater thing upon the robot being enabled for something. Other solutions involve basing the time delay on something that isn't tied to the robot's datetime... I'm sure there's a source somewhere.