Gremlins and Troubleshooting

[Chief Hedgehog]

FRC 4607 had a terrible showing at our only regional this season (North Star).

I am the Head Coach/lead Mentor of FRC 4607. In the previous two seasons we had issues starting out, but our troubleshooting from the PIT team led us to find the problems and adjust quickly.

However, this season we had problems that plagued us throughout our only regional. Just to note, we do build a practice robot that we use to optimize our manipulators. The practice robot has an identical drive train, frame, etc. to our competition robot. Many of you saw our two release videos - and from our practice sessions we could stack 2 sets of 4 totes with ease and then cap with available time. Our competition robot worked like a dream before Bag'n'Tag - and our practice robot was a beast.

When we arrived at North Star we transferred our manipulators (intake and the forks) onto the competition robot. We ran the manipulators in the PIT, everything worked as they should. However, when we put the robot on the field, we had considerable problems connecting to the FMS. We spent 8 matches where the CSA's tried to get our robot to connect, and then after each match we had 2-5 CSA's in our PIT. We had the worst luck I have seen.

After 8 matches we eliminated the code, the robo-rio, the wiring, the VRM, and an errant 10amp breaker. The drive team finally had the opportunity to drive the robot at full functions in the 9th and 10th rounds at NS. However, it was too little too late.

So my question is this: What is your order of trouble-shooting the robot? FRC 4607 is lacking on this (as evident by our showing). How do we get beyond this in the future so we never deal with this problem again?

Thank you.