Worried about high CPU usage in CRIO

[Chris_Elston]

I admit I haven't been 100% involved with the software group in a few years until this year. I am back in the saddle again.

One thing I have noted is the high CPU usage in various things we have running. Here are some observation so far. I guess I am wondering if these are "normal behaviors".

We have noted that if we load up a default 2012 framework with the default arcade drive, we see about 55-60% CPU usage.

We wrote a serial driver that had taken this up to around 65-70% CPU usage. The loop rate is about 60 milliseconds here.

On another project, we have a vision application separate than the serial driver program that when the vision is tracking, consumes about 75-85% CPU usage. The loop rate is the standard vision processing VI.

So I am sitting here watching these two programs in development and I am concerned that when we combine then together that we are going to max out our CPU to 100%, cause watchdog errors and the robot to start dropping out of Tele-op mode because we are getting a "drive loop" not running fast enough error.

So a few questions.

1. Are these CPU usages normal?
2. Should we be concerned and start thinking about enabling and disabling loops in the program only when we need them? For example if we don't need vision tracking all the time, just turn off that loop until the moment we need it, then enable it, and shut off other loops?

Any other pointers, advice on CPU usage, watchdogs, or loop rates would be very appreciated.

Thanks