Non-Classmate DS Problems

[ayeckley]

Is anyone besides me having problems when running the Driver Station application on a PC (in this case, a laptop) other than the Classmate? The problem is that the cRIO and DS application seem to lose their connection after a random amount of time (anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds). We're not seeing this issue when using the actual Classmate. It would be helpful to be able to leave the Classmate at the school while doing off-site development work using our other cRIO.

Some details:

The problem occurs in both the Disabled and the Teleop DS states.

Sometimes the Communication Link goes down first followed by the Robot Code indicator, other times the reverse sequence. The link will automatically re-establish itself after about 10 seconds, and then go down again after 10 to 30 seconds, the cycle repeating itself ad nauseum.

The problem occurs with the same frequency using our code as well as the default 2010 code, so it's safe to assume its not a programming error on our part.

There are no errors reported in the DS Diagnostic window except those associated with the camera (since it's not connected) and the known-issue with Watchdog errors in that same window. There's no correlation between the watchdog error and the loss of communication (at least as indicated in the Diagnostic window).

The loss-of-connection occurs at the same frequency with the dashboard panel open or closed.

The problem occurs with both deployed (non-volatile startup) and non-deployed (volatile) code.

The cRIO is directly tethered to the PC using a straight cable (not crossover) to eliminate the router/WGA configuration as a possibile problem source.

The cRIO updates have been installed (FRCLabVIEWUpdate2.0for2010).

Driver Station Update #1 is installed.

The PC's wireless NIC is disabled.

The PC is running Windows XP. The same unit used to do a significant portion of the 2009 programming, and worked without issue.

The PC has LabVIEW installed since it is our primary development station this year, but the problem occurs regardless of whether or not the LabVIEW application is executed.

No other applications are running on the laptop, aside from the normal laptop services. Anti-virus is disabled as well.

I'm using an account with Administrator priviledges.

The PC assumes the proper 10.22.52.5 IP address when running the DS application. We use 10.22.52.6 when using the same laptop simultaneously with the Classmate.

The link is a 100BaseT, and there's no indication that the TCP/IP link between the two devices is getting broken.

This same PC is able to act as the development workstation with no issues when the Classmate is used to run the DS application.

Based on the number of questions/issues I'm reading about this year's DS here on CD, it looks like the 2010 control system architecture might be a step backward from last year's Blue Box, despite its ESD-sensitivity