Fried Ethernet Ports

[heydowns]

Originally Posted by buchanan

2077 had a physical port failure in competition this weekend, followed by complete control system failure which we presume, but haven't proved, was related.

In setting up for our next-to-last match one of the ports broke (we use both, one for field and one for a dashboard/video feed to a laptop). They finished the match OK, minus the laptop connection. We didn't have time to swap in a backup for the next match, so we ran it the same way. This time nothing, as in "robot didn't move at all".

The odd thing is that when we brought it back to the pits and tethered, everything seemed fine.

It was a real downer to end the competition on this note, but more troublesome is having an undiagnosed major major system failure with another competition coming up soon. The plan now is just to get another DS and hope that fixes it (the broken unit is in the crate and on its way), but it would be great if someone could help us make sense of the situation. Any advice?

This is not an unfamiliar story... We saw this many times in the past two weekends.

When you are faced with "it doesn't work at all", the best thing you can do is to isolate the potential problem. In this case, I would suspect your second DS port is on the way out (probably loose in the board). When you get your hands on the DS again, connect it up to a PC with an appropriate IP address and see if the Eth light blinks rapidly. Check if the PC can "ping" the DS.
See if the light drops in and out if you GENTLY move the ethernet port.

Regardless of that type of diagnostic, and given that your team is using two ports anyway for your dashboard, at your next competition I would get over to Spare Parts and try to get a loaner DS.