For teams having trouble downloading code

[rwood359]

Originally Posted by lscime

Toward the end of build season we started having trouble connecting to our cRIO. It turned out that when our cRIO booted and ran its deployed code it took up too much processor speed to run the code and connect to our programming computer properly. So we started flipping the "no app" dip switch on the cRIO every time we wished to download code to the cRIO and all of our connection issues were solved! Essentially, flipping this dip switch prevents the cRIO from running code when it boots preventing connection issues. (Of course you'll want to reset the switch before you go to play a match). I didn't want to post this until we had been to a competition and I was sure there wasn't anything wrong with our code.

We were having problems doing a "run as startup". I can't remember the error message, but we were getting several lines that said something to the effect that it couldn't complete with the current dialog. Clicking NEXT for each error cleared the message and sometimes would let the load complete. But usually it would not succeed with an error about failing to download configuration settings. The only way that we found to get around the problem was to re-image the cRIO.
Doug Norman from NI was at the AZ regional, looked at the problem and couldn't come up with a solution. He showed us the "no app" switch procedure. We now Set the "no app" switch, press "reset" on the cRIO, build, run as startup, reset the no app switch, and reset the cRIO. I made sure that all of the drive team knows to look for the switch in the wrong position and the coach carries a small screwdriver in the programming team forgets to reset the switch.