Cannot communicate with game adapter

[rsisk]

I've read through the many threads on CD about resetting the network for the robot after a competition, have done it successfully several times on different robots, and I follow the directions in the manual each time, but this time I ran into a situation I have not encountered before.

After reseting the network according to the manual, I could not ping the gaming adapter on the robot from the classmate. I could ping the router 10.x.y.4, I could ping the gaming adapter if I ran a cable from the router to the gaming adapter 10.x.y.1. But try as I might, I could not ping it wirelessly.

Now here is where it gets interesting, I had another classmate, so I configured the network on the Classmate 2, identical to the Classmate 1 above 10.x.y.15. I did an ipconfig /all on both computers to compare the configuration and they were exactly the same (except for the MAC address of course). I could plug the network cable into Classmate 2 and ping the gaming adapter all day. Plug the network cable into classmate 1, not able to ping the gaming adapter.

The only conclusion I can come to is a problem with Classmate 1, although I'll be darned if I can even begin to describe what that might be.

Any ideas?

[Greg McKaskle]

You may want to verify that the wifi is off on the bad classmate. My guess is that the IPs of the wifi are different, or the metric values are different, and the first classmate is trying to ping wirelessly.

Also, does the second classmate do more than ping correctly? If it works as a DS to the robot, or can ping the robot, then I'd say you have shown it is not the bridge and is the first classmate. If the second still cannot ping the robot, then they are different symptoms, but there still might be an issue with the bridge.

Greg McKaskle

[David Brinza]

Richard,

Thanks for working with Team 980 on this most perplexing issue. My darned day-job got in the way, so we only had a little time on Thurs morning to try to get our DS talking with the robot for the demo. Based on an earlier post from Mark McLeod, turning off the bridge wireless security should have been a simple bang-bang procedure. Hah!

Maybe others have had similar issues? First, we'll check the wireless setting on Classmate 1. If we still have an issue, we have access to a second Classmate (from our friends on 2404). We can resume side-by-side testing to see if we can isolate the problem. Perhaps we'll need to re-image Classmate 1?? Fortunately, we've got a lot of time until IRI.

[rsisk]

Greg,
Turning off the WiFi is the one of first things I do on the classmate to avoid conflicts, so I am pretty sure it was off during the diagnosis. Wouldn't hurt to try again to confirm.

Also tried multiple network cables, deleted and reinstalled the device in the device manager, made sure other routers nearby were turned off (we were running three robots with three complete network setups).


Dave,
np, I'm always up for a good challenge ;> Reimaging the classmate would certainly eliminate software as one of the remaining variables.

[Bryan Herbst]

2052 is also having issues connecting to our bridge.

In the basic settings we disabled WPA (security is set to none), and we also tried turning off the "extra wifi protection."

[rsisk]

Have you tried pinging the Gaming Adapter with a standard ethernet cable connecting the router to the gaming adapter?

If you cannot ping the gaming adapter when wired to the router, then you have some other configuration problem and should reset both devices and follow the instructions in section 2.10 of the FRC Control Systems manual to configure the devices.

If you can ping the adapter, then you might have the same problem as we were having. Not sure if a solution has been found for our problem yet. I'll check and post later when I find out.

[Bryan Herbst]

We just reset both the gaming adapter and router to factory settings and went through the entire set up process again, to no avail.

[rsisk]

Are you using the WRT160N Router like in this picture:



If so, did you follow this step when configuring the gaming adapter?

2.10.1 Step 8
NOTE: When using the WRT160N the “802.11 Band” option should be set to 2.4GHz

[Bryan Herbst]

Yes, both the gaming adapter and router are set to 2.5GHz.

[rsisk]

OK, that's about the limit of my skills.

If you have another classmate, try testing the network with it. If that works, then you are at the same point as 980 and the next step is to reimage the classmate.

If you do reimage, make sure you have any data you want to survive the process backed up, namely your software if you were developing on the classmate.

Sorry I don't have any more suggestions at this point. If you do reimage and that fixes the problem, please be sure to post your results.

[Bryan Herbst]

While we certainly can consider reimaging the classmate, I do not believe that is the problem.

Then everything is tethered, we can reach the gaming bridge (via 10.20.52.1) and the router (10.20.52.4), but the gaming adapter just refuses to connect to the router. The classmate can connect to the router perfectly fine.

[rsisk]

That is similar to the issue we were seeing when diagnosing the issue with 980's network. But we had the advantage of having a second classmate available to configure exactly the same. One classmate worked, the other didn't leading us to suspect the classmate as it was the only variable between the two tests.

Of course, saying it is the classmate leaves a lot of possibilities, i.e., the ethernet's physical connection, the network card, updates applied to the OS. Reimaging would eliminate the software variables.

My difficulty is trying to explain what in the classmate would cause the router to not talk to the gaming adapter. Could it be a marginal electrical connection? Badly formed packet? Its hard to tell. Common sense would say it has to be the configuration/operation of the adapter or router, but in my tests I pretty sure I isolated all the variables leaving the classmate as the only variable.

[Bryan Herbst]

We aren't even using the classmate to try and diagnose the problem though. While our classmate is connected to the network, we are trying to fix it via another laptop connected to the router (ip 10.20.52.6).

[Bryan Herbst]

Anyone think that reformatting the classmate and the cRio would help? Factory resetting the bridge and router didn't help.

If so, anyone have a link to the classmate image? I am afraid that our USB drive disappeared during the season.