706 had the curse of all curses

[Bruceb]

Hello to all the great teams at the Milwaukee Regional. I am sure most of you were aware that 706 was having unpresidented problems at Milwaukee this weekend. Not looking for simpathy here, just going to list our problems and maybe get feedback on what we may have done wrong.
Our problems started at the mini regional at Sussex 2 weeks prior and because we could not find the issue there we still had them at Milwaukee.
Problem 1.
Frequent (every 15-30 seconds) we would loose comm. Classmate would report no robot code/no robot communication. This would last fe 1-5 seconds. We never did figure this problem out.
Problem 2
Our solenoid break out boxes would glitch(the lights would go out and the solenoids would loose power for .5-2 seconds). This started out as a minir annoyance happenning every minute or so but by Friday morning had turned into a major problem happening every couple of seconds. This was finally corrected by replacing the classmate.
Problem 3.
Our autonomous code worked perfectly in the pit and on the practice field but on the field it would quit right after we lifted the ubertube to the top and then when the field shifted to tele we would not get control for 30 seconds or so. Fixed this by giving up on the autonomous. Still don't understand it as we have no way to test on the field. One of our mentors thinks he may have found some coding issue for the failure to move forward but not the delay in tele.
We were trying defferent thins durring every break we had. We had all th experts from FIRST and NI in our pits constantly trying to help figure out these problems. We replaced the PDB. Nope We replaced the CRIO. No fix.
We replaced the main breaker as the techs were seeing a major voltage drop (down to 9 volts at times) even when we were not moving. Not that either. We replace the 5 volt converter. Not that either. We powered the CRIO from an ac power supply. Still no help.
We had a reasonably good minibot and deploy so we were luckily picked as the second pick of the number 8 seed so we went to the prom.
Right before the match started the thought was that the only thing we have not replaced was the solonoid brakout boxes. We had 2 both running on 12 volts. Time we tight and while doing other things we enlisted the help of an NI person to replace those. Just got that done in time to get to the field so we had no time to test..BAD Got to the game and none of the controls for our arm were working right. Worst of all the pneumatic ratchet for our winch would not release so we could only go up.
Turns out that while the breakout boxes were being replaced some of the wires to the solenoid valves had gotten unpluged from the adapter on the breakout box and had gotten plugged back in backwards.
Didn't get that fixed in time for the second match so we had to call a sub for us.
Last but not least, while still trying to shoot the manipulator problem our driver was looking at the minibot adn swithed it on but nothing happened. I looked at it as I had just rplaced the battery. Turns out that one of the pins in the plug had pushed out so it was not making contact.
All I could do at that time was look at him and laugh.
WHAT ELSE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope we have this jinx busted before next year.

Best of luck to you all.

Bruce