Strange Disconnection from FMS

Technical Technical Discussion
#1

During our first match yesterday, our robot was not able to communicate with the drivers station. The strange part was our USB webcam plugged into the RIO was streaming to the driver station, even though connection and robot code were shown as red.

The FTAs told us it was an issue between the radio and the robot, and played the match with us sitting on the field, disabled.

The only change we made was to restart the driver station and disabled windows firewall (again… I didn’t realize there were multiple firewalls).

A possibly related issue is the Labview dashboard crashing repeatedly while connected to FMS but not the robot. We’re pretty sure it isn’t an issue since many teams observed it happening but the FTA who helped us after the match was concerned.

#2

The Dashboard can alternate between full screen and a smaller window over and over again while the Driver Station PC is not connected to the robot. That’s just a quirk and nothing to be worried about. If that’s what you saw then the Dashboard isn’t crashing.

The Driver Station app disconnect can be related to mdns/firewall/wireless enabled types of things on the PC. That’s all stuff the field crew probably checked. I assume from your description that your PC is running Windows 10? There are other Win10 firewall settings that need to be disabled, too.

Did you switch Ethernet cable between the roboRIO and radio?
Is the roboRIO plugged into the radio port closest to the power connector?
Did you try a roboRIO reset from the button on the roboRIO?

Did this happen just the one time?
If so, then a robot power cycle may have fixed it, too.