The 8.2 (or 8.3) Battery Voltage Bug

[chrisinmd]

Yeah, we got bit by the 'bug' in like our 4th seeding match today at Chesapeake. Bot started going crazy all over the field, running into the walls and such. Took it back to the pits, all the controls were messed up, then mentor walks over to the controls, hits the select button on the OI, and says, "Well you only have 8.2 volts here." Ahh!!! Problem solved. Got the update on flash drive from IFI guy, our programmer had it fixed in 5 minutes.

Everything else went well and we are now 5 and 1- the match we lost was when our bot was possessed!

Make sure to get the update!

Good luck to all,
-Chris

[yoyodyne]

I am happy to report that so far (8 matches today) Team 116 has not had problems at the Peachtree regional. We are using the same library update as we were at VCU and in addition using the new linker command file with gpr15 PROTECTED. I still don't understand how user processor memory issues would impact the master processor to OI comms. We have not implemented the large code switches mostly because we don't want to slow the code down.

Greg

[Rickertsen2]

This killed one of our alliance partners in the elimination rounds and almost killed another.

[ericand]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

This killed one of our alliance partners in the elimination rounds and almost killed another.

More importantly, did the suggested linker and library changes help, or were they already using them?

At this point, posts saying "yes it happened to me (or someone we know)" are not worth much without knowing if they have tried the fix or not.

If anyone is experiencing a problem (and they are using the fix) please let IFI know, and let the Chief Delphi community know ASAP!

Right now, all indications that I have seen are that the linker script and the library replacements fix the two hardware problems in the robot controller. If anyone has reason to doubt that the problems are fixed, or if anyone has experienced any other controller hardware problems, please report the details here.

Thanks!

[kaszeta]

Well, with the revised linker script, Team 95's robot functioned perfectly at Palmetto. Competition is a lot more entertaining when your bot actually does something (we got second place with Teams 16 and 1676).

Deepfelt thanks to everyone here and at IFI for their help in finding this problem and turning our season around.

[ericand]

Originally Posted by kaszeta

Well, with the revised linker script, Team 95's robot functioned perfectly at Palmetto. Competition is a lot more entertaining when your bot actually does something (we got second place with Teams 16 and 1676).

Deepfelt thanks to everyone here and at IFI for their help in finding this problem and turning our season around.

I concur, it was very nice seeing our robot run in Las Vegas and being confident that any strange behavior was due to things within our control, and not hardware failure in the RC.

[ericand]

Does anyone know if the hardware problem that caused this has been fixed in the 2007 controler, or do we still need the linker script change that eliminates the upper section of memory?

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by ericand

Does anyone know if the hardware problem that caused this has been fixed in the 2007 controler, or do we still need the linker script change that eliminates the upper section of memory?

No, it hasn't. This years controller uses the same revision of the 18F8722 as last year.

-Kevin

[ericand]

My understanding was that the problem was drift in the oscilator that coordinated the communication between the master and user processors.

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by ericand

My understanding was that the problem was drift in the oscilator that coordinated the communication between the master and user processors.

Come to think of it, I was discussing this year's controller with IFI staff and this was mentioned, but I don't recall if they made changes to address this bug. The other 18F8722 related bugs are still there though. You might give 'em a call to find out.

-Kevin

[amateurrobotguy]

Yeah, I will dl and patch just to be sure. Oh, the ref thought we were having the 8.2 volt bug, but it turned out to be the circuit breaker tripping Is there any plans to fix this bug permanently? Did Microsoft have something to do with the controller---this seems like their handy-work

[JBotAlan]

I saw this bug tonight on last year's controller. I am not using any fixes yet, because I didn't think that this was such a huge issue.

Mine went into autonomous mode. All by itself. Even though the competition jumper was connected and set to disable. This is a *serious safety issue*. More than one light was amber on the RC; I think it was the bottom two. I can't remember for sure because I saw it, went "what the..?" and hit reset a few times. For about 2 minutes the controller was strange, not obeying joystick commands, shifting (or trying to, there was no air in the pneumatics), and running auton intermittently (YEA! Another intermittent error! ). I re-programmed the controller more than once, with slightly different codes (I added a printf to see if it really was auton running; I couldn't believe it).

I will try the linker script. I already had new libraries compiled in, so those aren't the cure. I hate that I have to use a "beta-ish" fix, but if that's all there is, that's what I'll use. This is the first time in the whole year and a half we've had that controller that I've seen that error. May it never come back!

Hopefully IFI gets it straightened out quick!

JBot

[Joe Ross]

I saw the 8.3 Battery Voltage Bug last night with the following setup:

2004 controller upgraded with the 8722 processor (the upgrade was done last year).
Beta 14 master firmware.
2005 radios.
2007 OI
the current linker script and frc_library.lib from the 2007 default code (which I verified were the same as the updated ones from last year)


I originally saw the problem about a week ago. After investigating, I realized we were not using the new frc_library.lib. After putting that in, the problem went away until last night, when we saw the problem 3 or 4 times.

[Terry Sherman]

We've seen the 8.3/8.2 Battery Voltage Bug yesterday and today with the following setup:

2007 controller
Beta 14 master firmware.
2007 radios.
2007 OI

We have the PROTECTED memory section defined in the linker command file.
We have the latest FRC 8722 Library file

Has any other teams seen the 8.2v bug resurface? Any ideas?

Thanks!
-Terry

[chris31]

Originally Posted by Terry Sherman

We've seen the 8.3/8.2 Battery Voltage Bug yesterday and today with the following setup:

2007 controller
Beta 14 master firmware.
2007 radios.
2007 OI

We have the PROTECTED memory section defined in the linker command file.
We have the latest FRC 8722 Library file

Has any other teams seen the 8.2v bug resurface? Any ideas?

Thanks!
-Terry

It hurt first week regional team last year. Hopefully, if it is occurring again we can figure it out fast. Especially since we ship our RC tomorrow.