Info about 2CAN red/orange status LED

We have one of the new 2CANs and we’re running the 2.21 firmware. In approximately 1 out of every 3 or 4 boots, we are see the 2CAN flashing red/orange. This indicates a failure of the hardware boot tests. I sent an email to Cross The Road Electronics, and I got a response pretty quickly - kudos to Cross The Road Electronics and Mike in particular, and I figured I’d post the info here in case anyone else is seeing this

  1. They are aware of the problem .
  2. The issue is that one of the tests is a check on the SPI interface lines from the processor. This test asserts the pin, waits a short amount of time, and checks the status of the pin. This period appears to be too short, and occasionally the test fails.
  3. According to Cross The Road Electronics, the device should still be functional even if it fails this test.
  4. An updated firmware will be released soon to address the issue

We’ve just been rebooting it since I hate to see angry flashing lights on my robot, so I haven’t tested to see if it does in fact behave correctly. And it should be noted that if your 2CAN is constantly failing the hardware tests, then you may have a defective unit. But for us this was good news and we are looking forward to the update.

—Michael J Coss - Mentor Team 303