When you try a different DSC as Al suggests, i would make one more suggestion - make the wiring as simple as possible to test it. By that, i mean keep the DSC off the robot, run two power wires to the PDB and the connector to the cRio, and that’s it. then power on the robot and let it boot up. That way, you can be absolutely positive none of your other connections are causing any problems.
If the LED on the DSC works in that situation, start making other connections, checking the LED at every step. If the LED dies at some point, at least you know what connection it was!
My gut instinct says you have/had a short in the wiring for the signal light that blew the fuse Al mentioned… even if that short was later fixed, without the fuse the light still won’t work!
I was just wondering if it could possible be my cRIO image:confused:. Is there any way I can program the light to blink with labview just to eliminate the chance that it is a hardware problem:confused:
We have tried different modules in the cRIO, 4 DSC, 2 cables from the cRIO and 2 lights. We have re-wired AGAIN this time with the wire you recommended however this still did not work! >:( I am currently in the process of updating and will let you know if that works!
Peter, lets go back to the beginning here, because I’m suspecting more and more the fuse Al mentioned, and a short somewhere in your wiring. If, for example, you wired up the signal light incorrectly, such that it permitted such a short, and successively tried all 4 side cars with this same wiring, it’s possible you blew the fuse in all 4 side cars. Even if you had fixed it (the second signal light you tried), because they were already blown it wouldn’t help.
Where is your team located? It could be handy to have another team nearby assist with some debugging. For example, if their signal light works, you could try replacing their side car with yours - if the light now doesn’t work, then the problem is in the side car. If the light does work, then we know the side car is not the issue and can start tracing it back from there.
We only tried the first DSC with the signal light we didnt try the other ones. However, we are located in Metchen New Jersey and would be very happy to have another team come out and help us with this urgent issue. We would also be willing to go to anyone near by. We are all at our whits end and really need the help.
Peter,
Try another DSC without inserting the RSL connector. You should be able to see the LED on the board flashing when disabled and steady when enabled. It is entirely possible to have a shorted RSL that will hold the LED on the board in an off state. Turn off the robot before you remove the connector, count to ten and then turn the power on. It this is solid state fuse, it will not reset until the power has been turned off. If that works, use a VOM to test the connector and RSL wiring. It should not be less than 500 ohms in both directions.
Most of the programmers think of the RSL as the LED on the Digital Sidecar, because it’s all we have until the electricians wire the Big Yellow Light (BYL).
Most of the electricians think of it as the big yellow light connected to it as a repeater, because they get to wire it.
Try another DSC without inserting the RSL connector
We tried this and none of the other 3 rsl lights on each of the dsc work.
As one of you suggested I sent one of our mentors home with a DSC that does not blink and he will bring it to another team he knows and have them try it for us. When he returns with it I will let you know weather the other team got it to work or not!
Umm, that means it’s not wired to the Power Distribution Panel.
White Wago on the DSC to a pair of red/black wagos on the Power Distribution Panel - mind that the wires aren’t caught on the insulation instead of the bare wire.
Here’s a photo
As a side note: We call those three lights to the left of the Wago connector the power status LEDs, that’s why they are labeled “bat, 6v, 5v”
The RSL is only the LED to the right of the Wago connector.
Mark McLeod;921167]Umm, that means it’s not wired to the Power Distribution Panel.
I was not talking about the Power indicator lights i was taliking about the 1 RSL light on each of the 3 DSC totaling 3 RSL lights that dont work.
AND
It is wired EXACTLY as you show in the picture.
I wish I had been here earlier. In the picture you can clearly see there isn’t anything connected to the wago connector for the DSC.
If this was true the 3 power indicator lights would not be on also the entire DSC works EXCEPT for the RSL led and the big orange light.
There are minor wiring issues in what Dave showed us
If you are talking about the small wires, I have previously mentioned that we have corrected this issue by changing the wires to 16 AWG as recomended.
Sorry I misunderstood your “3 RSL’s”.
The RSL is automatic as far as we’re concerned. Our code cannot control it.
Does your code or the default code work after you download it?
If it doesn’t do anything then I’d have to agree with you that there is an issue with the cRIO running that you have to track down. The RSL may be out because there really isn’t any robot code.
Mark and Alan,
I will defer to you two on this. Is there a step in the procedure that then saves the image to the Crio instead of merely loading it? i.e., the image then reverts to a previous saved image when the power is cycled. (like some step is being skipped in this case) I seem to remember something odd about this last year, but as you know, I am not the software expert.
There are generally two different ways to download our own code to the robot.
One is temporary where it resides only in memory and only as long as your environment, for instance LabVIEW, is running and connected to the cRIO.
When this is stopped the RSL will go out altogether.
The other way is to permanently download the code and that only starts to run after the cRIO is rebooted. The RSL should always be on after any reboot completes.
The symptoms here could happen, for instance, if the user temporarily ran the code from say LabVIEW, then changed User accounts to start the Driver Station. The act of changing user accounts stops all processes.
I’ll have to go play with the cRIO to replicate when the RSL is out altogether. My memory may be faulty on when exactly the RSL is out, because it’s become an automatic recognition if I see it in person.
The RSL is basically out whenever no code is actually running on the cRIO.
