Field Issues

[JohnBoucher]

What are the week one field issues? Any communication problems?

[JewishDan18]

Team 20 has found that even though they say any laptop can be used legally, it needs to be set up very specifically to work.

[rsisk]

Many teams at the Alamo could not connect with the field system in early matches. Some of these issues were caused by the incorrect version of software on the Driver Station.

TEAMS can fix this by making sure they have the correct version of software on their Driver Station.

INSPECTORS can help resolve this by noting the correct version of software on their inspection list. It currently says to check for the correct version, but doesn't say how or what the version should be.

[Derobojo]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Many teams at the Alamo could not connect with the field system in early matches. Some of these issues were caused by the incorrect version of software on the Driver Station.

That was happening over at the granite states regionals too. They had to redo some matches because the whole red alliance side was not working. Then at the begining of friday we go to our first match and it is not working and the told us it was because we had the wrong firmware on the drive station but no one ever told us it had to be switched and it was working fine on thursday.

[colt527]

Hey All,

I was the Control Systems Advisor at the Pittsburgh Regional last week (had an absolute blast there ). Our volunteer team there carefully monitored every issue that came up with the robots in all the matches. If a robot stopped moving (or never started moving), we made sure we and the team knew why it happened.

Throughout the whole competition we did not experience a single field related issue (except for a rouge tube knocking down a tower's lights). I have had teams approach me after they see the "communication" light drop off the dashboard saying that there must be a field problem. While nothing is impossible, it is much more likely that something else was the cause. For example, if a robots battery falls out, that will also cause the "communication" light go red for obvious reasons

Mark and Joe have given excellent summaries of the common problems that were encountered in getting teams up and running. I will just add some of my own observations.

On the issue of using version DS 2.17 and 1.05. At Pittsburgh we saw both work fine, but I encouraged everyone to update their software if for no other reason than consistency on the field. And again, "couldn't hurt".

Non classmate laptops were the cause of a few weird problems throughout the weekend. We had one team using a non-classmate laptop who always had to log out and log back in to successfully connect to FMS. They would get all greens on the dashboard the first time, but FMS wouldn't see them, so we always had them just log off and log back in and it would fix it.

We also had some interesting problems with a few teams updating their cRIO firmware using non-classmate laptops. I think a few of those problems were just caused by buggy computers, but there was one case where a brand new computer running Windows 7 just could not successfully download the cRIO image. My best guess was some kind of firewall issue. We just had that team download the version using their classmate and it was fine. At least 3 teams needed to use different laptops after unsuccessfully using theirs to download the latest image.

The DLINK radios take about 1-2 minutes to connect after power on. In order to keep up 6 minute match cycles we had everyone power on their robots as soon as they hit the field (unless they had a gyro). We kept track of which robots got powered on last so we knew which ones to wait for while the radios connected and not accidentally bypass them while they were still connecting.

Thats pretty much all I can remember right now. If anyone had an issue that went unexplained or was thought to be a field problem, please PM me and I would be happy to try and investigate it. Always looking for potential problems

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by colt527

The DLINK radios take about 1-2 minutes to connect after power on. In order to keep up 6 minute match cycles we had everyone power on their robots as soon as they hit the field (unless they had a gyro).

A best practice for using the gyro is to have the software do a gyro reset at the very beginning of autonomous. That way the team can line up the robot with it on, but the final position will be the 0 angle for autonomous. Even if a team can't implement that software fix, they can reboot the robot with the reset switch on the cRIO, which will sync much faster then a full power cycle of everything (they may also be able to use the reboot robot button on the DS).

[bfvaneyck]

- As the FTAA for the Wisconsin And Minnesota North Star Regionals, I, too noticed that the driver station software v1.05 seemed to cause FMS linkup failures. I just told the teams to upgrade to the latest version just to keep that out of the equation.
- And STILL the teams don't seem to understand that having the Developer account logged in (in the background) is a bad thing!!
- Although the FIRST instructions for setting up a non-classmate laptop are very specific, some teams failed to get the memo and came onto the field with various incorrect driver accounts. I'd think that this should be a line item for the robot inspectors to check.
- YES, these new robot radios take FOREVER to link up! I can't remember how long both the FTA and I just stared at them in order to make them connect (it was an aura thing I suspect). Although, some teams had the switch set to AUTO rather than "bridge", which took even longer to link, it was probably just an inadvertent change of the switch during the competition.
- And I've noticed that there's not any type of training provided for the FTAAs on the FIRST site. You'd think that a position like this would merit at least a one page summary of what the FTAAs are responsible for.

Maybe this is the start.....

[Mr MOE]

Originally Posted by JewishDan18

Team 20 has found that even though they say any laptop can be used legally, it needs to be set up very specifically to work.

Dan:

What specifically did you have problems with when using a non-Classmate lapop. Any specific advice for set-up for other teams doing the same?

Thanks!

-J-

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Mr MOE

Dan:

What specifically did you have problems with when using a non-Classmate lapop. Any specific advice for set-up for other teams doing the same?

Thanks!

-J-

Related question:

Was the laptop(s) in question set up exactly according to this document?

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

Related question:

Was the laptop(s) in question set up exactly according to this document?

I can't speak for Dan, but one recurring gotcha I saw at Alamo is that the Driver account must be named "Driver", exactly. "Driver Station" won't work.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

I can't speak for Dan, but one recurring gotcha I saw at Alamo is that the Driver account must be named "Driver", exactly. "Driver Station" won't work.

I want to say for the record, that FIRST has been very upfront about making sure you have your non-classmates configured specifically for competition.

When you log onto your Driver Account, If the regular windows bar still show up on the Driver Station and Dashboard, then you have not configured it correctly.

Teams, if you have the opportunity, go ahead and download a copy of FMS 2009 Light on another computer. Plug your FMS computer and DS computer into your old Linksys Router (or any other router/swtich of choice). Make sure the router's IP is set to 10.0.0.4 Then run the FMS and DS in the Driver account. Set one of the team numbers to your team number in the FMS. Set your DS up as your normally would for competition. If all works you'll see your computer say FMS Locked, and the FMS will show your DS connected.

It would be a great idea for all teams to try this before arriving at events to help keep these problems from occurring.

[Mark McLeod]

Radios:

• Radios mounted between/on-top-of/near the drive CIMs and/or buried deep in the robot metal lose communications when the robot starts to drive. Talk to the FTA before a match to ask him/her to watch the packet round trip time for your robot. Slow times (>20ms) probably mean the radio needs to be repositioned.
• Loose power connections to the radio. Even a momentary power drop from a robot sudden movement or collision loses field connection for at least a full minute.
• Radio power NOT coming from the special voltage dip protected Power Distribution Panel connection.
• When setting the WPA, plug in Ethernet before power.
• DLinks MUST be set to BRIDGE. Some tried AUTO, which eventually works, but only after the match is half over and the FTA had to bypass you to get the match started.

cRIO:

• Loose power connections. Tug gently on the power wires at both the cRIO and PD ends to see if they tug out.
• Image rev MUST be v28
• Sometimes, communications between the cRIO and DLink seemed to hold things up, but it's an easy fix and the FTAs handle that as second nature.

Driver Station:

• Wrong rev. Must be this year. Either 01.05.11.00 or 02.27.11.00 are fine. Older ones mean your robot will never link to the field.
• Check the cRIO rev here too. Image rev MUST be v28.
• Remain wary of misplaced joystick inputs. Check them by pushing a button and seeing them light up blue on the Driver Station Setup tab.
• Remain wary of the joysticks and Cypress appearing, BUT not getting enough power over USB to operate. Cypress should NOT share a USB port with anything else. The same is true for power hungry bells & whistles joysticks.

Field:

• The minibot tower's can give false positives when robots hit them hard in the endgame, so refs are scoring them by hand. FTAs are playing with the sensitivity.

General:

• Plugged in and charged batteries are always welcome.
• Powered up robots work well.
• Being in the correct player station works better.

I'll have to go through my notes to see what else.
The FTAs have their own more complete list of course. I was mostly in the pits and infrequently on the field watching a particular team with problems until the end.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Radios:

• Radio power NOT coming from the special voltage dip protected Power Distribution Panel connection.

Mark, can you explain this entry in more detail?

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Mark, can you explain this entry in more detail?

The 12V Robot radio connector on the end of the PDB uses a buck/boost converter to maintain 12V down to a very low battery input voltage (4 or 5V if I recall correctly).

Because of this protection (and because the rules require it), the 12V-5V converter for the robot radio should be plugged into this connector and not one of the generic 20A/30A Wago terminals.

[trident523]

One of the more interesting problems we had was when the field unexpectedly reset. We set up for a re-match, and the match starts. Our robot arch wildly hitting almost every field element and crushing our manipulator against the field wall. A programming post-mortem found that because we chose to send values directly to our speed controllers, that was the last value they were set to. Our driver was holding up and right, and during autonomous, it continued to move only up and right, instead of setting back to zero.

Be prepared for unexpected events like that during qualifying matches. If a re-match is called, I would try to remember to reset your robot, or account for this in autonomous (setting all motors to zero before continuing with code.)

Or, you could have used watchdog...