"No Comms"

[sabruce01]

Has anyone experienced this during competition? I know in OKC there were a few that had problems. Our team lost communications 5 of the 8 qualification rounds. Our bot would simply quit in the playing field. I spoke with nearly everyone there and got nowhere. Everything they told us to check had already been replaced in the pit. Auto would be fine, then about 1/2 way through tele, we would loose communication. During our last elimination round we didn't even have an auto which caused us to be eliminated. There is no way we were loosing power to the receiver. We troubleshot that to death and could not get it to fail. But that always seemed to be the default answer I got when asking around.

Any suggestions??? Anybody experience the same?

[big1boom]

Sounds like the problem a few teams were having with the Drivers Station. The Ethernet ports on the DS seem to break easily, so once one breaks, make sure to tape over it. We had Port 2 break.

[#1packerfan92]

this happened to our team at the NJ regional. We beilieve it was the server on the fields fault because it happened to numorus teams on each alliance over the three days

[GBIT]

At GSR they re-ran about 12 matches and were down with comms problems for most of the morning thursday.... Our robot lost about 3 times cause of comms issues....

HERE IS HOW THEY FIXED IT!!!

1. Plug in your DS and wait for it to fully load....
2 THEN turn on your robot and wait for it to get comms

Also make sure that your gateway isn't tucked inside your robot somewhere that caused half of our problems.

Also at GSR they ended up sprinkling water in the driver's box to help cut down on static...

So be careful of placement of your gateway and such and you should be fine..

Oh and one more thing:
With the new DS update given at the competition it actually says "no comm" not "no comms"... Just saying

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by GBIT

Also make sure that your gateway isn't tucked inside your robot somewhere that caused half of our problems.

I was wondering if this would be a problem. Also does the orientation of the gateway seem to make any difference? we had some problems during testing before ship, and ended up putting the thing on a top surface of the robot.

With the new DS update given at the competition

Is that "new" update the one that has been on the FIRST site since Feb 10th or so?

http://usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=10934

we found it the day before crating up the robot, it kind of messed up our plans for autnomous control.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Is that "new" update the one that has been on the FIRST site since Feb 10th or so?

http://usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=10934

we found it the day before crating up the robot, it kind of messed up our plans for autnomous control.

Jim,
Can you please expand on, or explain, this comment. I'm not sure I understand how updating the DS impacts Autonomous. Inquiring minds want to know.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by billbo911

Jim,
Can you please expand on, or explain, this comment. I'm not sure I understand how updating the DS impacts Autonomous. Inquiring minds want to know.

The older version of the DS software would "see" DS digital inputs in autonomous mode, the newer version does not. We had a set of switches connected to the DS to control autnomous, but now those switches need to be moved to the robot, and the program changed. There was no time to do that before ship.

We also did not withhold our control system to work on programming...based on our experience of making some simple changes in one place, and several other things not working as a result, all during build season. We put a mostly working robot in the crate, hopefully we'll make all our practice matches, and fix the programming problems one at a time as time allows at the competitions.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by squirrel

The older version of the DS software would "see" DS digital inputs in autonomous mode, the newer version does not. We had a set of switches connected to the DS to control autnomous, but now those switches need to be moved to the robot, and the program changed. There was no time to do that before ship.

The new DS update only affects the autonomous enabled mode. You can still read the switches in autonomous disabled (or any other mode). If you latch the data from before the transition to autonomous enabled, you can keep the switches on the DS.

[MrForbes]

Thanks, I'll tell Kevin!

[rrossbach]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

The new DS update only affects the autonomous enabled mode. You can still read the switches in autonomous disabled (or any other mode). If you latch the data from before the transition to autonomous disabled, you can keep the switches on the DS.

Just a small correction - I think Joe meant to say "If you latch the data from before the transition to autonomous enabled, you can keep the switches on the DS".

I was helping numerous teams with this and some other control system "gotchas" at the NJ regional this past weekend. As long as you read the DS inputs during startup/initialization (while the match is in auto disabled) and save the info somewhere (like a functional global in LabView or a static in C++), then you can use that info during auto enabled. We use DS switches to select which autonomous mode we want to run - much more convenient than having them on the robot.

Thanks,
Ron
Team 2607 - software mentor

[Al Skierkiewicz]

In Chicago the robots that had the issues listed above (working for auto and 30-60 seconds into the match) had the same problem. Teams had wired the wireless power to a breakered output of the PD rather than the radio power output. When the battery falls to less than 12 volts the radio suddenly cuts out That is why the PD has a special regulated 12 volt output. Inspectors will check for this next week when it is added to the inspection checklist. Pleased follow the control system instructions on how to power the radio.

[484-ben]

During our competition on Saturday at NJ our robot failed completely to operate during autonomous. During teleop motors connected to spikes worked well, motors connected to Jaguar speed controllers did not operate. Everything worked perfectly on Friday. Any suggestions?

[484-ben]

During our competition on Saturday at NJ our robot failed completely to operate during autonomous. During teleop motors connected to spikes worked well, motors connected to Jaguar speed controllers did not operate. Everything worked perfectly on Friday. Any suggestions?

[pitzoid]

Update:

Sent a bunch of test data to FIRST and DEKA yesterday confirming the DS Network chip susceptability to EMP. Today they were able to repeat my results, so it seems confirmed. We can't fix the DS easily, but we're working on a bunch of "workarounds". FIRST is looking into ways to eliminate static generation, which if they can will fix the source of the issue and I've been testing some FMS network mods today that enable the DS to do a minimal association with the the FMS network. I.e. now when the DS network chip resets on an EMP event, I can have it talking with both FMS and the robot in under 2 seconds. If the DS completely reboots its a few more seconds but it still comes back fast. Not the ideal situation, but it should help. Hopefully we won't have any static issues this weekend.

Oh, and the added extra benefit of the network mods? Looks like we dropped about 20 seconds off the initial DS/robot/fms linkup before a match starts

Real engineering: see a problem, analyze the data, if you can't "fix it", find the work around

[rrossbach]

Originally Posted by pitzoid

Update:

Sent a bunch of test data to FIRST and DEKA yesterday confirming the DS Network chip susceptability to EMP. Today they were able to repeat my results, so it seems confirmed. We can't fix the DS easily, but we're working on a bunch of "workarounds". FIRST is looking into ways to eliminate static generation, which if they can will fix the source of the issue and I've been testing some FMS network mods today that enable the DS to do a minimal association with the the FMS network. I.e. now when the DS network chip resets on an EMP event, I can have it talking with both FMS and the robot in under 2 seconds. If the DS completely reboots its a few more seconds but it still comes back fast. Not the ideal situation, but it should help. Hopefully we won't have any static issues this weekend.

Oh, and the added extra benefit of the network mods? Looks like we dropped about 20 seconds off the initial DS/robot/fms linkup before a match starts

Real engineering: see a problem, analyze the data, if you can't "fix it", find the work around

Great news! Hopefully even if there are any issues in future competitions it won't impact teams & their alliance partners as much as in the past. Thanks!!!

Ron