FRC Program State Frozen at Power-up

[WillyC]

I want to document a problem I had when starting up the FRC and OI for the very first time, out of the box. This problem and the solution is documented on the IFI website, but so far I haven't seen anyone mention it here. It looks like it's happened to a few people already because IFI has added it to their FAQ.

Setting the system up for the first time, I was following the instructions in the FRC quick start guide, and was able to set the channel number on the OI and then power up the FRC no problem. However, when I hooked up the tether, nothing ended up happening (at this point the OI and FRC were supposed to start talking to each other through the tether and all kinds of LEDs were supposed to light up on each). I power cycled both the OI and FRC, and then the FRC's Program State LED was yellow, indicating that it was ready to receive a new load through the serial port. Something was definitely wrong...the FRC was "stuck" waiting for a new load. I messed with it for a while and couldn't get the FRC out of that frozen state where it was waiting for a new load after being power cycled.

To get the FRC out of this state, you have to hold PROG and RESET down at the same time, then release RESET, then release PROG once the battery LED goes solid green. Then hit RESET and you should be un-stuck.

See the IFI link above for more info...