WET610N Bridge at Competition

[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.