cRio Serial to Can Bus Troubleshooting

Technical Control System
1

I think our serial port on the cRio is fried. I was hoping someone might have a way to confirm or point out something I have over looked. Here is the main points:

  1. We updated our programming and driver station laptop to the 2015 season for the new RoboRio.

  2. One of the programmers tried to add new code to last years bot using that laptop. (I know this is not a good idea. I DON’T know what happened when he did that. IE error message, if it was successful, etc)

  3. They also tried to connect with the new Driver Station. (Yes, I know that is not possible)

  4. So we installed the 2014 system on a different laptop.

  5. Moved the java code to the 2014 laptop.

  6. Reimaged the cRio with the Black Jaguar Serial to Can plugin.

  7. Checked the firmware on the black jags and made sure they were the 107 firmware.

  8. The bus worked fine when connecting with the software to update the firmware. We could see all the jags with different id # (2,3,4,5,6).

  9. Uploaded the java code but got a CANTimeoutException and before that you can see that the FRC_BlackJaguarBridgePlugin failed and the thread was deleted with an errno=196709.

  10. Tried this process many times but the jags are always blinking yellow and are never talking to the can bus when hooked up to the cRio. When hooked up to the computer using the firmware software they are all solid yellow.

Anyone have any ideas or know of a way to test the cRio serial port to see if it is still good?

2

Our team recently updated our previous year’s cRIO with this years code as well, and we cannot talk to the Jags, similar story to you, though we are a LabVIEW team. The other parts of our code work fine (our LEDs light up and compressor turns on). I haven’t had a chance to sit down and debug yet.

I believe there is an update to the Jag firmware, as I found v109 on the vex site. After updating all 7 with the BDC-COMM tool I can still not talk to them.

I doubt there is anything physically wrong with the RS-232 port itself, maybe something with the new image, or with how the Jags communicate now?

You can test the port by imaging without the Black CAN Bridge, and using console out, then using RS-232 <–> USB bridge. When you boot up you should see the something from the cRIO.

3

I will see if I can find some documentation on how to do that. I think you just use hyperterminal but I don’t know the settings exactly. I’ll add a link if I find it. Thank you for the suggestion.

4

Also, the RS233 to usb just adds a serial port to the computer if you don’t already have one. We have computers with them. Still need a null modem serial cable to do that as it has the crossover built in.

5

When you reimaged the cRIO, did you make sure the CONSOLE OUT switch was off? The console will interfere with the serial-to-CAN function.

6

Yes, it was off. I knew that would cause problems with the can bus. I forgot to add that in the original post. Thank you for the suggestion, though.

7

To test the cRIO serial port you can enable console out and read from it using a terminal program on a laptop having a serial port of a USB-Serial adaptor.
With the terminal connected just boot the cRIO and you’ll get the stream of console messages.

8

*** Update ***

  1. We reimaged the cRio with the none option for the CAN bus and the net console box ticked with java as the language option.

  2. Then we commented out all the code that dealt with the black jaguar can bus.

  3. Uploaded code to robot.

  4. Flipped the console out switch on the cRio (8 slot with physical dip switches).

  5. Hooked null modem cable up to cRio serial port and computer. (After no console messages I double checked by doing a continuity check on pin 2 on one side and pin 3 on the other and vice versa.)

  6. On computer opened putty, configured for serial, tried both com1 and com3 on different instances @ 115,200.

  7. Powered cRio and watched for console information.

We could not get any console information through the serial port. I am pretty sure the port is dead.

9

I remember reading that only the 4 slot cRIO is supported with this year’s code? If you install and use last year’s LabVIEW + NI Update and use the old image it may work?

I know for us we were running the bot a couple of days before updating it, so I feel it may be the image. Where can we go to submit a bug report for this or at least confirm? I would rather not have to re-wire our bot.

10

We used a different laptop and installed the 2014 system on it. We are programming in Java and the only difference from orignial successful code is the JDK is updated on this laptop. We did reimage the cRio with last years image and install the code with the 2014 system still no CAN bus or serial console port out (both tried independent of each other as you can not run both at once).