Things were going smoothly, (for the most part,) so far during our building and programming. We successfully got the robot to move for two days in a row. The next step was to get the compressor working. (We already had the program with no errors, but it wasn’t working when deployed.) I changed just one or two things in the compressor program and suddenly, our team light is blinking slowly which means it is disabled. The robot won’t even drive now! We changed some things and nothing. So, we put everything back to the way it was, but the light is still blinking slowly and the robot won’t drive. Can anyone offer some help? Any advise would be appreciated.
When you post you should be more descriptive of whats working and the status of your problem. When your refer to “light blinking slowly” is that the RSL light on the digital sidecar ?
If so , check the RSL light debug codes.
If you are referring to RSL light, we had a similar problem today. We found that simply re-imaging the cRio was the only solution.
I’m curious how many teams are having to re-image when all else fails?
our robot had the same problem for a bit with the jaguars constantly remaining disabled even though we were in teleop and enabled, so we just checked it the router and adapter in the wireless settings, and once it connected in tethered and wireless, we pinged it and it worked fine. not sure why though
At first glance I’d say the symptoms point to a Watchdog failure.
Did you back out your changes or were you able to revert to a previously saved working version?
We were having a similar problem… we reloaded the default code and it worked again, so we went back through the edited code and it turns out there was a watchdog issue.
Did you try reloading default code? We never had to re-image the RIO when this happen to us?!
We were able to go back to a version that used to work. The team light would turn solid and we could drive it. However, now when we went back to that working version, the light blinks slow and it won’t drive.
There are a few things that can cause these symptoms.
What does the Driver Station battery: status say? No Comms or No Code?
It sounds like the DS might be displaying No Code.
It says No Comms. Should it not be saying either?
No Comms means that it isn’t a code problem at all.
The Driver Station and cRIO cannot establish normal communications, so the cRIO isn’t allowing your code to execute.
Try running the Pinger utility on your PC to see what it can see.
(I use windriver)
Untrue, I have often gotten “No Comms” with a code error. (Instead of saying “No Code”)
(All values are approx)
What I have noticied about the debug light:
You start your robot at 00s
10s Light turns on and is blinking
40s dashboard/Driverstation responds
40s Light blinking slows down
80s Light goes solid, robot begins operating
Previously I’ve messed up a define in such a way I attempted to use an undefined variable in the init of the robot. At 80s the robot light would turn off and the driverstation/dashboard would report No Comms.
The robot would then proceed to restart continously always coming online for a period of a few seconds before resulting in No Comms. It would always report No Comms with the light blinking slowly.
I’ve also had this problem when I tried to send too many tcp/ip packets at once. (Turns out trying to send 100 packets in less than a second blows up the cRIO =P)
You have the most interesting errors :rolleyes: 
I had a problem today where the DS and Dashboard showed enabled, but the DSC was showing a slow blink (disabled). It turns out that if your are using the camera and it is powered off or there is an comm problem, the DSC will be disabled. This happens while running also. A camera power or comm problem during a match will disable the robot. At least when it is started using the run arrow. I didn’t have time to build and deploy a startup version to check that mode.
I’ll try pinging the computer today after school. I’m almost positive that its a watchdog issue which means there’s a connectivity problem or its not getting fed properly. I know how to test and trouble shoot for connectivity. How do I feed the watchdog? Reading the manual and other forums simply say that it has to be done. I know that its basically receiving a signal from other devices. How do I “feed it more?”
Yes and no…I’ve just about memorized the status light and we pretty much have a watchdog issue.
Lots and lots of ways to mess up that Watchdog.
Which development environment (Wind River or LabVIEW)?
What did you start from as a base (Advanced/Basic Framework, Simple Robot Template).
If you want to post a zip of your project, a second set of eyes will help.
Regardless of Bomber7’s self-denial-of-service attacks against himself , the DS No Comms still bothers me as a failed Watchdog would produce a DS No Code error.
No Comms essentially means the DS Linux operating system cannot communicate with the cRIO VxWorks operating system. It should be outside our code unless we discover creative ways to crash the cRIO operating system.
Well, I fixed the problem by setting everything back to “factory specs.” Reimaged the cRio, reinstalled update 3.0 for labview, even reupdated the firmware for the DS. I think its the reimaged cRio that actually fixed the solution. We’ll have to build our code a little bit more carefully this time (smaller incremental steps) to trouble shoot what kind of changes tick my watchdog off.