Robot Controller & Operator Interface troubles

[patrickrd]

Last week our team did a demonstration outdoors on a rather warm (~75 degrees) and sunny day. Our robot powered up just fine and started off working like normal, but after about a minute the robot would stop working. It would basically randomly start and stop working throughout the day. Upon closer inspection, the "No Data/Signal" light was blinking red on and off. After about an hour or two of checking every wire on the robot (we even had the same trouble when using tether!) and kicking the robot violently, we were convinced our robot controller or operator interface was screwed up in some way. Then we postulated that the robot was working whenever the sun went behind the clouds (or clouds in front of the sun, depending on your views and personal beliefs of how the solar system works), and stopped when it was sunny. This was hard to rigorously check, but it did seem to have a greater chance of working after being in the shade for a bit.

Then, we did another demo that night -- indoors -- and everything worked fine.

Has anyone seen this before??? It had me mighty confused.

Patrick