Driver Station/Control System not Communicating

[dekker120]

Our team has had nothing but problems since we finished the benchtop test week one... I think the problem is with our driver station because I pinged the driver station three times and each time it came back with a 25%-100% loss of data... Then found the FRC Diagnostic utility and it came back the with same result... scattered comms between the computer and the driver station... have had to skip over the driver station in order to get code on the robot... running latest firmware and all IP's are set correctly... contacted FIRST and they said to post on the forum and see if anyone had any ideas ... so... any ideas????

[nathanww]

Check your cable. the most likely culprit when you're getting packet loss like this on a wired connection is something wrong with the connection medium. You might want to:

1. Swap out the cable for a known good one and see if it works
2. Ensure that the cable is seated correctly in its plugs on both ends
3. Check for any sources of electrical noise. The cable is supposedly shielded, but something like having it wrapped around your DS's adapter might still hurt your connection quality.

[dekker120]

Used four or five different cables when running the pings....

[Greg McKaskle]

If this is still repeatable and the cables and connectors are good, the next culprit may be the enet connectors on the device. while pinging, try putting small amounts of pressure on the enet plugs on the DS. Do the other devices too, but my first place to test would be the DS. See if you can cause all failures or all successes with the pressure. It may indicate a loose connection within the device.

Greg McKaskle

[dekker120]

I tried pushing and pulling and wiggling and nothing changed....

[dekker120]

(Assistant mentor, posting through this account)

I've done some fairly extensive testing, and come to the conclusion that there's probably a hardware problem within the driver's station box. The driver station relays network information perfectly--to the extent that I can ping the robot and receive a response with 100% success rate, and no lag whatsoever--but it cannot seem to generate a signal on its own.

Anything that involves sending signal from the driver station to the NI board fails--the driver station receives periodic battery readings once about every 10 seconds, indicating that it can receive signal from the NI board. Likewise, all cables are attached properly, and the computer I'm writing from (communicating through the driver station, router, receiver, and to the NI board) can communicate with the NI board flawlessly. The only thing left that could be wrong (IMHO) is the driver station.

[Bomberofdoom]

It seems communication problems between the Robot and the operators still hunts us since 2007.

Our DS and cRio have started to having connection problems, similar to what is mentioned here, where once in a while a packet is lost, or the connection is lost for a few seconds/miliseconds. We see it very clearly when we run a motor constantly and it just stops abruptly and keeps running a few seconds later. The DS reads "No comms" once in a while...

I've been suffering from handeling these problems for the last 3 years I have been involved in FIRST. What The Ef......

We tried checking battery and stuff. Even 12.5v doesn't effect.