Strange Driver Station Logg

[JackCostello]

My team have recently been seeing a strange log output for our driver station. It looks like a binary file since it is a series of unicode characters, but we can't figure out where it comes from. The attached file is a screenshot of one such output. The exact characters are not the same each time. We are using Windows 7 64 bit, and programming in Lua, which is built on C. Does anyone know what is happening here? It doesn't seem to have actually caused any problem, but it looks very much like it will in the future and in any case we want to know what is happening on our systems whenever we can.

[Bryce Paputa]

No idea what the cause is, but we've seen very similar output using java.

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by JackCostello

My team have recently been seeing a strange log output for our driver station. It looks like a binary file since it is a series of unicode characters, but we can't
figure out where it comes from. The attached file is a screenshot of one such output. The exact characters are not the same each time. We are using Windows 7 64 bit, and programming in Lua, which is built on C. Does anyone know what is happening here?

Is there a procedure to reproduce this? I would like to investigate this. Maybe file a tracker at https://usfirst.collab.net/sf/tracke...cker.4_defects

[kylelanman]

This started happening to us after we installed the latest WPILib(C++) update and updated the firmware on all our devices (RoboRio, PDP, PCM, Talon SRXs).

[Greg McKaskle]

If you could contact me and provide the log file, both .dslog and .dsevent, that would help me to look into it. I have seen this once, but do not know how to reproduce it and don't know what may be causing it.

Greg McKaskle

[Jared Russell]

We have seen this several times on our Driver Station. We use Java.

We had assumed that it was just the Great Cthulhu trying to speak to us.

[JackCostello]

Some of you are saying you are also seeing this with Java. Is anyone getting this with C++ as well? We'll try to figure out the procedure to replicate this.

[MikeE]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

We have seen this several times on our Driver Station. We use Java.

We had assumed that it was just the Great Cthulhu trying to speak to us.

I'm sure Cthulhu has mastered UTF-8

[randantor]

Originally Posted by JackCostello

Some of you are saying you are also seeing this with Java. Is anyone getting this with C++ as well? We'll try to figure out the procedure to replicate this.

Not C++, but we use LabVIEW and we see it every so often. It seems to happen sometimes after the robot has been connected for a while.

[Greg McKaskle]

While Cthulhu may or may not know UTF-8, this is a binary string that is supposed to be logged to the .pdplog file. It contains integers and bitfields and is being transmitted via TCP alongside the error messages. The parsing or construction of the info seems to get off and this is treated like an error message ... and that is where the odd characters come from. No Ouija, no Cthulhu.

Greg McKaskle

[Mark McLeod]

I have logs of the same occurrence from week 1 when it happened to Team 359.
I'll send them when I get home from my current volunteer gig.

[JackCostello]

Has anyone actually had any issues stemming from this? It has been harmless for us so far, and if no one has actually had any issues it could just be a simple mis-directed or mis-parsed file. I don't want to waste anyone's time trying to solve a non-issue. However if someone actually has had problems with this I would like to help fix it.

[Mr. Lim]

We had this happen at least once while setting up on the field at GTRC. We also use Java. It didn't seem to have any negative effect on our robot.