[FTC]: Field Control Issues / Analysis

[billw]

At the VA tournament this past weekend, we experienced field control issues four separate times. Each time, it appeared that the robot would just keep running any motors that were active at the time control dropped out.

In three of these instances, the field management system reported that it was still in communication with the robot (I am unsure about the fourth). We experienced this behavior twice at the same station (controller #1, far left blue field). I also know that this controller was pronounced "dead" in between these occurrences and was swapped out for another. BTW, we use only a single joystick controller.

In one of these instances, our partner also lost control later in the match (controllers#3/4, same field).

We ran with absolutely no issues for more than 60 minutes on the practice field. (For those that were not there, this field was in the same venue as the tournament fields and would have been subject to roughly the same amount of Bluetooth traffic.)

Our code is written in RobotC using the current versions of firmware, etc.

I know that other teams experienced problems also, and I have heard several suggestions that Bluetooth was at fault. It did appear to give the organizers a difficult time when setting up some connections, but it has occurred to me that the problem could be in the link between the joysticks and the field management system. This would explain RF link still being reported as operational and the fact that we could run without problems in the same RF environment when disconnected from the FMS.

I was hoping that we could document these problems and perhaps use our collective experience to help identify the underlying issue. This is in no way meant to turn into a negative commentary, so please refrain from posting anything of that nature.

--Bill Wiley
Coach, ACME Robotics
FTC #12, 14, VRC #12a-e