COMM lost way to many times

[bdaroz]

We had some issues with our radio and/or FMS at the Tech Valley Regional this weekend.

One of them was on us (tug test failed on our radio power connector), the other was indeterminate. (CSA/FTA was blaming robot power, as a whole, but we have video showing no power loss on the RoboRio.)

Regardless of what the problem is, even as a rookie team, the instrumentation provided by the RoboRIO/PDU/FMS/DS completely fails during problem events.

During the aftermath of our issues, we attempted to use the DS logs to trace voltage, power draw, comms, and log messages from the RoboRIO. The problem is, you can make "guesses" about your voltage state in the fraction of a second leading up to the event, but once it happens, you're blind.

We're already redoing our robot code library for next year to address some of these shortcomings. We'll be logging voltage and PDU stats, as well as bridge/radio and FMS connectivity via ethernet directly on the RoboRIO. In addition we'll be using a cached-logger, such that if DS communication is lost we can back-fill in our logs.

We are attempting to address the issue of the complete lack of FMS logging, and the logging dropout during any communication loss event. We're also pushing the logging closer to the source of the data. Our goal is to be able to document the voltages, RoboRIO, PDU, and Radio/FMS/DS status in an effort to diagnose issues.