Week one regional control system showstoppers

[whytheheckme]

Originally Posted by sparrowkc

320x240 compression=30 fps=10

We used these settings because they were a reasonable margin below the settings that caused >1sec lag on the classmate. I doubt bandwidth was the problem. Chrisisme's answer makes the most sense to me right now, we need to look into that some more. We ended up scrapping all of our camera code and physically unplugging the camera. The lag never came back, but who knows if it was the camera's fault or not...

You should try 320x240 with a compression of 40. Shouldn't be a significant difference in quality, and that will use significantly less bandwidth. Just a thought though, no basis for this other than some simple experimentation. Do you also have the updated dashboard code without the graphs etc. that were really slowing down with the camera running?

Jacob

[UCGL_Guy]

We also had major communication problems in KC this weekend. This FMS / Control system is NOT ready for prime time. I posted a rather lengthy post in another thread about this. For me I am frustrated to no end over the overall poor quality of the complete control system. Too many bugs and tweaks with no real answer from one owner.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

We had issues on Thursday connecting to FMS. Issues so bad that they loaned us another classmate (which promptly messed up our controls ... not sure why).

We fixed our connection issues by moving our radio, uninstalling the driver station, reinstalling the driver station (from a different source than our own), and reinstalling the updates (again a different source than our origional).

No issues after that.

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

These weren't the typical always rapid flashing you get when the RSL is miswired without the LA-to-Lb jumper?

Mark,

No they were not. I personally inspected several robots, including the two I mentor, and the jumper was installed. Moreover, the RSL acted correctly in the pits, both before and after the team was on the field, and the RSL only misbehaved under FMS control.

Regards,

Mike

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by sparrowkc

First Problem
On several occasions, we experienced severe lag (~5 seconds) between the driver controls and the robot's motion. This problem only emerges when we're on the field with the FMS. Sometimes it persists after a match across multiple power cycles, and then fixes itself seemingly randomly. I'm fairly confident that this is nota code problem; We've never seen it before and is solved by multiple reboots, not code changes.

This issue happened to 1714 at IRI last year. I don't know how to describe what caused it, but I believe data was being written to memory that was not erased before power off or something like that. I guess there was data involving the camera that ate up memory because the camera was no longer plugged in. If you don't know how to change your code to fix this (if I were more code savvy I'd have a better description here), flashing your cRIO every match will make the problem go away as a quick fix.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by sparrowkc

We just finished day two of the Kansas City regional. Although we had some bright spots today (We're currently tied for the highest match score of this season ), two problems continualy plagued our robot's performance and left us dead in the water during at least three matches. I'm hoping to hear from teams that have experienced the same problems and what they are doing to solve them.

First Problem
On several occasions, we experienced severe lag (~5 seconds) between the driver controls and the robot's motion. This problem only emerges when we're on the field with the FMS. Sometimes it persists after a match across multiple power cycles, and then fixes itself seemingly randomly. I'm fairly confident that this is nota code problem; We've never seen it before and is solved by multiple reboots, not code changes.

Second problem
During some matches, our joystick simply did not work. Inputs on the IO board did work, and the joystick was listed in the setup tab of the DS. I know of at least one other team that had this problem. I remember it happening on and off the field. It seemed to persist across power cycles and then fix itself. Ours was a logitech 3-axis joystick. It was going through the hub, and I couldn't reproduce it after I connected it straight to the classmate.

So... Ideas? Comments?

This sounds very similar to the issues we had until we replaced our USB hub. For less than $10 you might be able to make these problems go away!!

[DonRotolo]

See also this thread, at NJ a few teams found that double-connecting the USB Hub might have fixed that kind of problem.

[Bandgeek80001]

Originally Posted by sparrowkc

Second problem
During some matches, our joystick simply did not work. Inputs on the IO board did work, and the joystick was listed in the setup tab of the DS. I know of at least one other team that had this problem. I remember it happening on and off the field. It seemed to persist across power cycles and then fix itself. Ours was a logitech 3-axis joystick. It was going through the hub, and I couldn't reproduce it after I connected it straight to the classmate.

In the pre-season, we've figured out an annoying, yet seemingly foolproof way to fix the joystick thing in a pinch.

If you go into the DS, under the setup tab, you can see all the joysticks that the computer detects. If you reorder the malfunctioning one to a different position, and then move it back, this seems to fix the problem.

Ultimately I wish we knew a better fix, but this has worked in the several times we've experienced this problem.

And our Targus hub went out, too. We're planning to bring a few spares