Robot Control Center in Labview cannot find NXT Brick under Windows 8.1 - suggestions?

[BristolGarry]

Hi folks -

We recently upgraded our laptop from a (very) aging Acer Extensa running Windows XP to an Acer Aspire E1-510 running Windows 8.1. With the old laptop, we are able to connect to the NXT brick through our Belkin Wireless G MIMO router, using the Robot Control Center (RCC).  The RCC on the old laptop is able to scan for, find, and select the NXT brick almost immediately.  For some reason, switching to the new laptop results in the RCC not being able to find the NXT brick - at all.  😕  The Samantha Field Control System immediately picks up and connects to the NXT brick with the new laptop, so we know that the new laptop is able to connect through the router and the Samantha module to the NXT brick with no difficulties using that software path, but we are having zero luck connecting to the NXT brick by using the Robot Control System.  Any suggestions?  Is this a Windows 8.1 issue?  If so, is anyone aware of a workaround?

Garry Wakely (Team 7090 - First Appalachian Robotics)

[HunterSeeker]

Garry  I passed this along to our R&D team and they were able to reproduce this issue: not being able to connect to an NXT over wifi in Win 8.1, when it works fine with Win 7. We have not found any root causes yet, but we will continue troubleshooting and post the results here when we have more. 

Cheers

Hunter

[BristolGarry]

Hello Hunter - Thank you very much for getting back to me about this so quickly - I appreciate it.  I look forward to hearing what the R&D team find and/or what their solution is. 

Thanks again,

Garry Wakely

[HunterSeeker · Accepted solution]

We have identified and fixed the bug that is causing this issue. It seems there was some problematic code in the MINDSTORMS Casper driver that caused this issue in Win 8.1.  

This fix will be included in the new LabVIEW Toolkit for MINDSTORMS Competition (LTMC 2014-2015) that will be released on Sept 1.  

Garry, thank you so much for bringing this issue to our attention; I am glad we were able to find a quick fix before the MCT is released.  Let me know if you have any questions 

Cheers

Hunter

[BristolGarry]

Hello Hunter -  Thank you very much for the quick response, and the quick bug fix!  That will save a lot of teams a lot of futile head scratching, come September.

Thank you again!

Garry Wakely