Robot Communication Lost for odd reason

[engbrech]

Hi all,

Sophomore team here getting ready for our initial competition during week 6. Today we were practicing with our shadow bot and ran into a problem that is baffling me.

We have a catapult that uses two CIM motor that draw full power when launching the ball. Over weeks of testing this has caused zero problems.

Today we deployed the program to the roborio such that is would start up on power on. Everything works fine, robot can drive, auto aim, etc... until we launch the catapult. When we do that, the robot shuts down, loses communication and restarts.

Other symptoms seem to indicate that the robot and roborio are simply drawing much more power when program is run at power on than we we deploy it from the computer. voltages drop significantly when the robot is driving though they don't turn it off. but when the catapult is launched, game over. Obviously, this will kill us at competition so I'm hoping for quick and helpful suggestions from some veterans.

Thanks all

Jason Engbrecht
Team 5434
Lead Mentor