Potential Driver Station bug causing emergency stops?

[vantjac]

(This might be posted twice, the first was removed somehow)

I've had an issue since last year where Driver Station will emergency stop as soon as the robot is enabled.

I've reproduced the issue on 3 different laptops (all Windows 10, different brands) by doing this:

    With Driver Station open and the robot disabled, test to make sure the robot enables/disables as normal
    Put the laptop to sleep
    Wake up the laptop from sleep by pressing Space (the Space key seems to be the source of the issue)
    Again press space on the lock screen to enter password. Unlock
    Try to enable the robot. The Enable button won't work, and if you click it a couple of times, the robot will Emergency Stop
    After this point, Driver Station will be permanently broken until you close and reopen it. Even after power cycling the robot, pressing enable will always Emergency Stop the robot.

I realize that Space emergency stops while the robot is enabled, but it shouldn't have an effect when it is disabled. Waking the computer from sleep by pressing Space seems like a common enough thing that it could cause unexpected problems for teams.

Is what I'm experiencing a bug? Or am I doing something wrong?

[BoKnows]

Looking at what you've described, I've worked with a few here to do some testing.  In our small sample of tests, we weren't able to see this behavior in Win8.  However, on a Win10 PC we were able to see this from just using the space bar to get the password dialog to pop up (my PC only accepts the screen open or power button press to wake up currently).  

I'd likely classify this as a bug.  I wouldn't expect this behavior.  I'll try to reach out to our Driver Station guru to see what they're thinking.

I'm not sure if this would be an immediate fix.  But, I do have a pair of workarounds you can use to make sure you don't get into some sad situations later.

1) Use another key to wakeup/enter your password.  

2) Restart the driver station before each match

While not ideal, I think both of these are more ideal than having your robot be frustrated with your Driver Station.

[vantjac]

Thank you Jeff. We luckily discovered this issue last year before any competitions, so we made sure to restart Driver Station before each match as you suggested. But it seemed like an issue that could cause other teams unexpected problems.

[BoKnows]

Something to think about if you run into similar situations in the future...

If we had been aware of this last season, there's a non-zero chance someone would have had time to look into this and have a fix in place prior to this season.  Finding out now, it's much more difficult to get it included.

It'd be glorious if you bring attention to these odd behaviors as soon as you see them.  I can't promise everything will get fixed or will be fixed quickly.  But, awareness is always the first step on that path.  We try to make sure you're in the best possible situation to succeed at events, and more importantly have fun.  Even if it isn't a bug, if it can help things improve it's worth pointing out.

[vantjac]

Okay, I'll be sure to report any future issues as soon as I discover them. Thanks again for your help.