Driver Station is ENABLE - Talons are Blinking (DISABLED) - Compressor is ENABLED

[chris_elston]

We had a "strange" roborio problem. During normal play, our driver station would not ENABLE. Typically it doesn't enable when a joystick loses connection etc, this was something freaky...The camera was still streaming, the DS was connected to the robot, but just would not enable. Next we restarted the driver station software. That fixed the issue, however right after that, no CAN-BUS talons would enable. They blinked like they was all disable, however the robot was enabled. No errors on the driver station log. After a few minutes, it just started working again...I don't like when stuff like that happens...

We continue to have problems enabling and disabling the robot randomly, we will go for periods of hours of working find to a random hiccup then back to working again. Most of the time the fix is to RESTART the driver station or reboot the robot to get it out of a "funk". Once we have connection, the robot and driver station seem to behave.

We have the latest updates firmware 18.0 and 17.0 update that I am aware of, however is there any other reported problems with enabling your robot and everything works except the Talons on Can-Bus? The LED state is blinking when this happens. Any other hints what would cause your robot to be enabled and the talon can-bus to be all blinking? During this state, we can fire all the solenoid valves from the PCMs but no motor controls.

Here is the "Bag and Tag" code in the robot from my programming student Dane.

https://yrginc.box.com/s/e3xe1j92o7g82kp3ox8qxbpgs1i65ep7

[BoKnows]

Are you using a Win10 machine and sometimes use the space bar to get out of sleep?  If so, I've seen times when doing this puts the Driver Station into a state where it wants to queue that "wake up" as an emergency stop.  If you try to start, it just goes right back to disabled.

After a few minutes?  Did it just sit there doing nothing in those few minutes?  Or, did you try some things; enabling/disabling, etc?  I'd be curious to know what steps were taken in those few minutes to see if they could help shed some light onto what changed the behavior.

[chris_elston · Accepted solution]

Team Update 14 seems to have addressed this issue we saw which we posted about.

https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.net/frc2018/Manual/TeamUpdates/TeamUpdates-combined.pdf

CTR Electronics Software Update: An issue has been identified in the interaction between the roboRIO image and the CTR Electronics Phoenix software that can result in CTR Electronics CAN Motor controllers failing to properly enable, and an error being reported to the Driver Station. While the exact source of the issue has not been determined between the two components, CTR Electronics Phoenix versions 5.2.2.0 and later contain a patch that reduces the likelihood of occurrence. Teams are strongly encouraged to either update to Phoenix 5.2.2.0 or to learn how to circumvent the issue by reading the additional information found in the CTRE Phoenix documentation under Driver Station System Watchdog -63194.

[BoKnows]

If I'm reading that correctly, that would prevent the Talons from enabling.  In your original post, you mentioned the Driver Station wasn't enabling (although the topic says the driver station is enabled).

If your problem was the talons not enabling, that sounds like a good source.

If your problem was the driver station not enabling, that's unlikely to provide you a fix.

[chris_elston]

We have had both cases.

Driver station ENABLED - Talons disabled but everything else is enabled.

Dirver station won't ENABLE - generally so far, fixed by restarting the driver station, more rare than the above condition.

[BoKnows]

It sounds like you probably ran into two distinctly different problems.

For the first, I'd try the CTRE update you linked to.

For the second, I'd make a habit to not wake up the PC using the space bar.