This is our team’s 3rd year using Jags with CAN communications on our robot. We had a bare-bones electrical system including said Jag/CAN combo running with the roboRIO until recently. However, when we updated to BDC-COMM version 109, we’ve had a ton of issues with connectivity.
While driving and operating our robot, it appears as though the Jags lose communication for a second, causing the entire system to “stutter.” This has been really problematic as it makes driving and operating jerky and difficult.
Does anyone have an idea as to what the cause of this might be, whether with the BDC-COMM version or something entirely different?
Check your Driver station log to see if your battery voltage dips momentarily to 7v or lower.
Also look at the top of the log graph for orange dots or lines just below the Disabled/Auto/Teleop mode lines.
You may be browning out.
A brownout has the same symptoms as stuttering drive motors.
An easy check is watch the screen when it stutters. If it is a voltage brownout is will flash on screen under the battery symbol and the background for that part of the screen will also turn red.
As it turns our our CAN is fine. We were able to determine today that we kept dropping communication with the robot from our driver’s station. Though it is a whole different problem, I’m glad it isn’t CAN. Thank you for all of your help!