ANNOUNCING: navX MXP Robotics Navigation Sensor

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by slibert

Been thinking about what could be causing this issue.

Over the last few days extensive brownout testing w/SPI has been going on; no matter what scenario we throw at it, the LabView SPI library and the navX MXP keep recovering.

However, there was an update to the navX MXP firmware back on Jan. 20 this year that fixed an issue in the navX MXP where it would hang if it encountered a UART error (which could be caused by electrical noise). Since the UART on the navX MXP is always active (as long as the UART dip switch is enabled), and if you didn't have this firmware fix, the navX MXP could lock up even if SPI is being used.

The latest version of the firmware is v. 1.0.482. You can display the firmware version number using the "Magnetometer Calibration Tool".

If you do have a version earlier than v. 1.0.482, directions for upgrading the navX MXP firmware are here.

I know ours is 1.0.482, because I2C and SPI didnt work at all in the version that was preloaded, and looking at the flash drive we used to update it was 1.0.482. So at least on our end I don't think thats the issue. But I will double check.

And just to be clear, our issues over the past weekend were all seen on SPI. If it matters, we have the Update rate set to 60hz, The read is getting called once in the teleop loop, which is running every 20ms, and once in periodic tasks in a 20ms loop.