Small FMS timer bug

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

This is interesting. Does this happen every time or does it happen only occasionally.

It seems to happen every time. I checked a few matches live during Midwest and Milwaukee, and confirmed it at other events by spot-checking a selection of videos from TBA. You can check yourself by going to TBA and selecting a random match video - just take note of the time in the playback bar when you hear the 3 bells to begin operator control and then fast-forward 2 minutes. In every video I've checked, I've found that exactly 2 minutes later you'll hear the announcer saying "5 seconds left!" I just checked and it appears (based on more TBA video) that this bug was introduced between the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

The reason I asked is that I have just asked our coders to implement an automatic brake feature that puts the brake on our winch with 3 seconds left - I don't like depending on our drivers to remember in the heat of battle if it is easily fixed. From what our coders have been able to discover, there is no "what is the match time" function available on the cRio -- on the Classmate, yes, but not the cRio. So... no problem. We can watch for the first enable after Auton Mode and start counting seconds. When we get to 117, time to throw the brake with 3 seconds to spare...

...except now do we have to wait until 122?

I wondered if anyone was doing anything like that with timers that would run the length of the match... obviously for anyone trying that this bug is a little more serious. I can't think of any easy way off the top of my head to know how much time is remaining in the match other than what you're doing, so yes, I guess you'd have to wait until 1:22... (think of the upside though - maybe this means we can all be 5 pounds overweight!)