Autonomous independent-watchdog errors

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by ewoodring

I get error messages in the message window in the Diagnostics tab on the Driver Station that say "Watchdog expired: system #, user #." Is there anything in code I have to change to fix this?

It depends.
A few of these messages are normal and may not affect your robot operation.
The # is a count of how many of each have occurred and of which type of Watchdog (system vs. user).

• You'll usually see momentary system Watchdogs at mode transistions, e.g., Disabled -> Auto -> Teleop -> Disabled. Those are nothing to worry about.
• User Watchdogs are common when your autonomous code finishes and exits, but seeing them in Teleop or while Auto is supposed to be running is a problem in your code.

In the lower left of the Driver Station screen are you seeing a persistent message of "Watchdog not Fed?"

That message will occur if you are not currently running any autonomous code at all, for instance, if it has already completed and exited or if you have bypassed all auto code. The default Autonomous Independent will generate this Watchdog, since after it completes it's assignment it just exits and the Watchdog goes unfed.
The Watchdog message is not a problem if no code is supposed to be running.
In this case, when Teleop code begins to execute, it will resume feeding the Watchdog and the message will go away.