WET610N Bridge at Competition

[UCGL_Guy]

Hey Pit neighbor - As you know we also suffered unexplained communication issues- Ours was a little strange and impossible to pinpoint.
1. With the old bridge we had two matches where we lost the FMS right after autonomous - If this was a code issue I wouldn't think it would be random.
I tend to think the off the shelf network hardware is not designed to take the shock that they see in a FRC competition. Did the designers of the system get with the manufacturer to get the shock specs before deciding to use these on the robots? I know there are more industrial solutions available that are more robust than these.
Our problems seemed to only happen in the two middle stations. I don’t know but this may have just been coincidence. We were not the only ones to have issues with the FMS system having communication issues both intermittent and catastrophic. I talked with at least 5 teams to have issues at KC.
2. We then got permission from the FTA to try the newer bridge - The guy that plugged in the WPA didn't use the correct system to configure the bridge so end result was the third DOA match at KC. Why do we have such a complex system that we need experts to implement and cannot verify that it will actually work with the FMS before hand? I would suggest adding channels or have maybe an FMS Lite system available to check communication issues and compatibility.
3. We tried the reconfigure the newer bridge with the method for installing the WPA but to no avail. Thank goodness the FTA allowed us to switch bridges and thanks to Team 16 for loaning us their old practice bridge.
We left not knowing if we have a bridge that will work or not.
We were able to use the practice setup at KC to shake out a few issues before we bagged and tagged. We were able to use their new style bridge without a problem - basically similar to what we have seen back home. We will attempt to see what happens by using FMS Lite here at home.
4. Now to my big issue - No One claims complete ownership of the Total Control system package. NI has the most ownership and they do a great job of trying to help people with the various issues but who owns the system as a whole. Who do you go to if it isn’t a cRio or labview issue? There needs to be a control system expert at every regional with the tools to help diagnose issues. This was our problem, there was no way of figuring out the problem.
5. As a system the new control system is too unwieldy and complicated for people to understand and fix on the fly. It should be reevaluated and I am not a fan of it as it is currently rolled out as a package. If I had my option I would return back to the old system in a heartbeat. Teams spend an enormous amount of time, money and energy only to get to competition and see all of their efforts sit there motionless for 2 minutes. There were issues last year also. When will this system be out of testing and become reliable.
You could not implement a process control system this way without dire consequences. No customer would tolerate the issues that have surfaced with this system and yet still remain unresolved. The teams are the customer and we need to be treated more like the customer.

Here is hoping that we can function in Oklahoma City.

[dschaid]

We also experienced communications issues where we lost the FMS right after autonomous mode. We had the number one robot going into the final match at the Wisc Regional and lost communication twice. All of our issues were on the red alliance side. I would also like to see FIRST resolve these issues, as we do not have the resources to attend a second regional.

[Joe Ross]

We had a few teams successfully using the WET610N at the Arizona regional. One team had a bad WET610N, which would only intermittently connect with the field, and would also intermittently time-out when accessing the configuration. They replaced it with a new WET610N and everything worked.

The WET610N's do take a long time to power up. I never timed it, but it seemed like close to a minute.

We also had a WGA600 that would go into security mode after a minute, without any external interaction.

[UCGL_Guy]

Last night we were able to confirm the sequence using the FMS Light that a team should use to connect to the field.
1. Ensure that FMS is ready to accept your team – this is indicated by your team number showing up on the field panels. The team members on the field will need to indicate when your team number is displayed.
2. Plug in the Drivers Station and verify that FMS sees you by getting an FMS LOCK
3. Turn on the robot and wait for it to connect.
It appears to us doing this in the lab that if this sequence is not followed you have a high probability of not connecting and will need to start over.

We also believe a lot of our issue in KC was the security button on the bridge that was in the kit last year. We impacted a table last night (not real hard either) and this was enough to trip this and drop out communications on our practice robot. Suggest those that can upgrade to the 610 bridge that the rookies received in the kit this year. As a side note even after we reset the security button the FMS Light was indicating packet loss.
While we still see intermittent data loss it is know where to dropping out.

One thought and we haven't tried it is to bypass the security button on the old bridges.

[rl1806]

Team 1806 just ran two practice matches with the new bridge at the St. Louis regional and had no problems with it.

[UCGL_Guy]

That is good news - I think we figured out they were just configuring it wrong in KC - let me know how it goes the rest of the competition.