Watchdog

[darty]

We're allowed to compete with Watchdog set to disabled right? As in, we Opened it but used a false boolean for SetEnable.

[Sentient]

That's probably not a good idea. I'm not sure about the rules, but if you're code messes up, you may end up with a heap of metal rather than a robot. Using Watchdog doesn't really require much work. Why would you not want to use it?

[darty]

I'm just following orders, and I was told to ask if it was legal to have Watchdog disabled

[ringo115]

what is the watchdog mode on the driver station, why does it forcefully switch to that, why does it go to 00.00 volts?!?!?!?!?!?!

[dboisvert]

Watchdog is a safety precaution so you dont have a runaway robot.

00.00v is reading your battery voltage and I am assuming you never hooked it up to channel 8 of the Analog Breakout.

I would suggest reading the manuals more closely

[Greg McKaskle]

I'm not the rules expert, but in my opinion, you can disable the watchdog and still have a safe robot for competition. Here is why.

The system really has two watchdogs, each of which can shut down the I/O.

The primary watchdog, the system one, belongs to the communication system. It ensures that losing communications to the DS will stop the robot, and it ensures that disabling at the DS will stop the robot (by team or FMS). This watchdog alone is sufficient to make it safe in a competition. There is no way to turn this watchdog off and pass inspection.

The watchdog you are talking about is called the user watchdog, and its purpose is to recognize when your code isn't running loops where you update the I/O settings. Use it to feed the watchdog each time your controlling code goes through a loop that updates the most important I/O. This will protect the robot when your code hits a breakpoint in the development tools, and when the code locks up, crashes, or terminates the loop and stops controlling the I/O.

The user watchdog is probably most useful and important during development. My opinion on it is that if your robot is not on blocks, you should really use the watchdog. Some debugging is better done where the motors and I/O keeps going at a breakpoint. This is the primary reason the watchdog is allowed to be disabled, and clearly you want to be on blocks for that.

Greg McKaskle

[ringo115]

what would happen if you were wrong and we did plug it in there

[Greg McKaskle]

what would happen if you were wrong and we did plug it in there

I don't understand the question. Elaborate on plug it in there.

Greg McKaskle

[ringo115]

im not a big expert on electrical stuff but i do know its plugged in correctly, because when we run the camera volts come up but any other time it does not