Roborio keeps dropping connection

Technical Control System
1

We are using our robot for demonstrations for parents and new recruits and what not

The driver station consistently loses comms with the roborio and the radio.

I wasn’t there for some of it, and they said that even Ethernet is having the same effect

This didn’t happen during matches and it seems like it’s random when it starts to happen. It could work for 10 minutes without issue but then change a battery and it happens.

I’m not an expert robot programmer, so maybe there is something with the programming, found here:
https://github.com/frcerror404/FRC2019

I tried reflashing the radio a few times using both 2.4 and 5ghz and both open and WPA and they both have the same issue.

If anyone could help, that would be great

2

Can’t open your repository, perhaps it is set to private?

Do you have the same problem with different laptops? We have a laptop with a crappy CPU and it just isn’t fast enough to run the driver station and dashboard. There could also be a lot of stuff running on it slowing it down. Also firewall and antivirus I’ve heard can cause issued. See if the problem is solved by using a different laptop.

Could also be packet loss on wifi and a dodgy ethernet cable, when we demonstrate at conventions and expos we have trouble with wifi (we’ve also severed ethernet cables with mecanum).

Could be something in your code slowing the rio down, however if it worked at competition, and you haven’t changed the code, I don’t suspect that is the case.

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Could it be

  1. The connection between VRM and PDP (yeah you guys remember that quarterfinal at Lansing, that’s what it was)
  2. Do you Ethernet through the Rio or through the radio? The Ethernet connector may be screwed up on one of them.
  3. It may also be a bad cable if you use the same one from Rio to radio to do Rio to computer.
    It sounds like an electrical issue, so I’d check all of those.
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4

Take a look at the Driver Station log that was automatically recorded for one of the cases where the robot died.
It will have messages under the “Event List” tab that tell you where the connection was lost.
It’ll also have the PC CPU % recorded as well.
Robot battery could be dying out, etc.
That can point to where the trouble lies-hardware or software.

A big difference between competition and demo use is the longer length of time that the robot is kept running. For example, if the code has a memory leak it is more likely to show up in a 10 minute demo than a shorter 3 minute match.

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Just opened up the code for public

I will try those. We connect the Ethernet into the radio

I will try rio and see if we get different results.

I will also try and look at the VRM, we had issues with that before but I can’t remember what

We have two laptops (one really good, one kinda eh) and both have the same issue

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I can add logs Monday night

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We (4915) had a similar problem on the field this year. I’m not a programmer but ill see how well I can explain this. The problem was that if our mechanism controller pressed to many buttons the roborio’s RAM would fill up and It would reboot to save itself. Idk if this has anything to do with the problem your having. Good luck and I hope this helps.

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It may be a bad connection from the Rio to radio.

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I think I resolved the issue tonight.

It seems like the issue was that the orange PoE cable that REV supplies was getting worn out or whatever and was dropping the connection every bump or turn. We have mecanum wheels.

I replaced it with a barrel jack and it seems to be working.

Not a whole bunch of testing and will continue to update if there is another issue.

I also replaced the wires going from the PD board to the VRM

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