My team has setup a new test robot, and when we turned on the power, the RoboRIO 2 had green power and a flashing status light (about 1 Hz, on for half of the time per pulse), and the radio, comm, mode, and RSL lights were off. Based on Status Light Quick Reference — FIRST Robotics Competition documentation, that means there’s an unrecoverable error. What might it be? How would we fix it?
In case it was an issue with the RoboRIO, we tried another RoboRIO 2, which went into the same state. After taking the first RoboRIO out, we did find some bits of metal in some of the ports (but I don’t remember which), but we have tape over the ports of the second RoboRIO 2.
Errata: I did see RoboRio Status Light Blinking, which I think means we should contact NI, but I’d like to see a) whether there’s a little more we can try to do to fix the RoboRIOs and b) whether we’d need to send both RoboRIOs or just one. If anyone has thoughts on any potential problems with our setup that could be causing these issues, that would also be greatly appreciated!
This is often caused by metal shavings/swarf inside the Roborio case. I would take it apart and give it a thorough cleaning if software fixes don’t seem to work.
As @kingc95 mentioned, the most common cause for this on a Rio2 is a bad/missing image. This could be from an unimaged microSD card (they don’t come imaged new), an improperly seated microSD card, or one thats missing entirely.
Please make sure the card is imaged properly per the WPILib docs (using Balena Etcher, NOT the roborio imaging tool). Then ensure it is properly inserted into the rio (correct orientation, and it should “click” into place so that its nearly flush with the top of the slot).
After that, the LED should no longer be flashing that error pattern. You’ll still need to set the team number (highly recommend a USB A->B cable for this) and to deploy code.
Thanks for the advice, everyone! For the second RoboRIO 2, at least, we had used it previously on a different rig. We also tried reflashing the microSD card (using Balena Etcher), but since it was at the end of the meeting, we didn’t have time to set the team number. After reflashing and reinserting, the status light was still flashing, but we can try again. We’ll also check for swarf if that doesn’t work.
If neither reflashing nor checking for swarf work, is the next option just contacting NI support?
I’ve only ever dealt with RoboRio 1, but yes that would be my advice. You should also write down briefly the steps you already took to include when you contact them. This will save them time sending you back instructions to do what you already did and play chat/email/phone/reply tag over several days
I don’t think they mean the real RSL, just the small built in status light on the RoboRio itself (like comms) that matches what the real RSL should be doing at a given moment.