Dead DS ethernet ports? Post here!

[Mentor007]

2228 lost 3 DS Ethernet ports pre-season when the DS ground update was in place. We have since implemented the grounding of the disable switch. We added a point to our electrical panel that connects to the CRio chassis, and a point to the Operator Panel that connects to the DS chassis. We made a discharge cable with 1 MegaOhm resistor that we always clip/connect to the CRio chassis and DS chassis prior to plugging in the Ethernet cable. We leave the discharge cable connected at all times during tethered. Since implementing this hardware and discipline we have not experience a single DS ethernet port failure. Humidity levels are now higher than earlier in the season, so this may not be definitive but it does look promising.

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by domoarigato

We had a bit of an oddity...

When in the pits, tethered to our robot, the both Ethernet ports on drivers station would work. However, every time that we went to a match, the drivers station's Ethernet ports would not work with the arena. We used the spare and that worked with our robot in the arena.

...Then we would go back to the pit and it would work again with the tether! AGHHHHH!

We had 2 Texas Instruments employees look at our problem and none of them could figure anything out.

This happened to us at NYC. The problem was we did not have the driver station at the latest release. Worked tethered but not on the field. Problem resolved before matches began.

[charrisTTI]

At DC Regional we lost port 2 on one DS and port 1 on our spare DS. Link light would continue to flash in appropriate manner on port 2 of first DS, but DS could not be pinged from PC when connected to PC via port 2. Second DS failure link light would stay on even when cable was removed. Using an ethernet switch allowed us to continue to program the robot with a single port failure. Wire DS to switch through good port, PC to switch, and cRIO to switch.

Before the first DS failed completely, we had been having difficulty staying connected in debug mode.

Several other teams lost one port. One team lost both. DS does not appear to be robustly designed. I have heard of no cRIO network port failures or PC network port failures, only the DS seems to be susceptible.