Strange Behavior

[Gary Bonner]

We had some strange problems with our robot at Ramp Riot this weekend. In our first match, everything worked fine. However, when we put the robot on the field for our second match and turned the power on, some, but not all of the motors began randomly moving. The arm would telescope and retract and turn back and forth, and the drive wheels would jerkily move the robot back and forth. The robot should have been disabled by the field control system at this time. Resetting the RC had no effect, nor did cycling the power or disconnecting the radio. We sat out the match with the power off. Back in the pits, we tethered up and had the same problem, even with a dongle set to disable. All of the RC LEDs were blinking red. Then, all on its own, it stopped and everything worked fine. We could power off and back on and it still worked. After a long break until our next match, we put it on the field and the same thing happened when we powered up. Again, after unsuccessfully trying to diagnose it in the pits, the problem just went away. Then, a 45-minute lunch break and the same thing happens when we get back. This time we just watched it spaz for about five minutes, and it went away. After that, we kept it powered up all the time, and the problem did not re-occur. Later in the afternoon, we reloaded our code, but we didn't leave the robot turned off long enough to tell if that fixed it. There was one match in the afternoon where the robot just died in the middle of a match. The OI lit no data, but the field control system didn't report any problems.

Any idea what's going on? Should we perform an exorcism? We store our bot in a convent basement and we don't want to be bringing any evil spirits down there.