Start with the basics: I spend (by far) the majority of my time at events on issues which would go away if all teams followed the advice below. I’m just going to link existing WPI documentation, but some of these gems are buried in a lot of other (good) information and are being missed by many teams:
- Preemptive Checks: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/hardware/hardware-basics/preemptive-troubleshooting.html
- Wiring Best Practices: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/hardware/hardware-basics/wiring-best-practices.html
- Log Viewer: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/software/driverstation/driver-station-log-viewer.html#driver-station-log-file-viewer
- Driver Station Network Diagnostics: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/software/driverstation/driver-station.html#diagnostics-tab
- Status Light Handy Decoder: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/hardware/hardware-basics/status-lights-ref.html
The WPI docs are helpful for many other problems, but it’s much easier to deal with other problems when the ones covered above are not present.