RoboRio 2.0 Flashing Status light

[Dzari]

I am sorry, every thread on this topic ends with a private message or just links.

I have tried every link to recover the RoboRio, you can not contact NI and talk to someone directly.

I wish someone at NI would just publish a step-by-step trouble shooting for the red flashing status light.

Seems to be a BIG secret on how to recover, the last step is to RETURN the system.

David

[BoKnows]

David,

I want to respond to both the issue you're running into and some of the feedback you've got here.

Posting on these forums does contact NI directly.  It also gives you others that may reply (though, not as often as you'll get the NI replies).  Blue names are NI folks.  As the window for the FIRST season is pretty short, the support staff isn't as versed in the nuances of the FIRST workflow and tend to give you misguided advice.  By removing ourselves from that ecosystem, we're able to give you help specific to how FIRST teams interact with hardware and software.  

It's not that it's a secret.  It's that there are a variety of reasons to get into this state.  The flashing light is essentially saying "I can't read the drive to boot up."  Any thread that ends in a message wouldn't be useful for your specific situation.  How can I tell?  The private messages are just sending a recovery file used to flash a roboRIO back to factory settings.  After walking through that and creating a place they can discuss struggles they may run into (that direct piece you asked for), the device requires a little work to get the firmware to a newer version and imaged.  As each is slightly different, sharing these in a public forum is likely to convince people to try those exact steps and run into issues, as you would have here.  We're also frequently discussing private contact information for those posting which isn't appropriate to keep in these threads.

You're working with a roboRIO 2.0.  It doesn't have the same issues you're seeing in those threads.  Instead, you're looking at one of two potential issues:

1. The SD card reader is bad
2. There is a problem with the specific SD card

For the first, your "last step" is going to be the option we'd have to take.  There isn't a repair we'd ask teams to make to resolve a problem.  Instead, we'd ship out a replacement device and bring yours back in to take a look at.  If we eliminate option 2, that's the one we'll take.

For option 2, we'll want to take a look at what you're running into.  I'll ask several questions so we can help narrow it down.

Was this roboRIO 2.0 ever working for you?

If yes, was it using the same SD card as now?

Have you tried re-imaging the SD card with this guide?

Have you tried any other SD cards imaged using the same guide?

With the steps coming from those questions, we can get a feel for if this ever worked, if the SD card's image became corrupt, or if the SD card itself is bad.  Those are generally easier fixes for you to handle on site.  If those don't work, I'll also be setting up a private conversation with you to get your personal contact info so we can get you a new device in hand.

[Dzari]

You're working with a roboRIO 2.0.  It doesn't have the same issues you're seeing in those threads.  Instead, you're looking at one of two potential issues:

1. The SD card reader is bad -   We do not know how to troubleshoot if the SD Card Reader on the RoboRio is bad.
2. There is a problem with the specific SD card

Was this roboRIO 2.0 ever working for you?

Not that I am aware of and the student that first took it out of the box and tried to use it left the team and we are unable to answer this question.  When the next student tried, it was flashing red status.  It was not efficient for our small team to try to trouble shoot it during the season, so we grabbed a 1.0 and moved on for the season.  This is the first Opportunity to take a deep dive on trouble shooting.

If yes, was it using the same SD card as now?   During the past month of troubleshooting we have used NEW SD cards.  The last two we just bought in the last week.

Have you tried re-imaging the SD card with this guide?  YES, the SD cards all seem to image correctly using the Raspberry Pi Imager.

Have you tried any other SD cards imaged using the same guide?  Yes.

We saw some thread of reformatting the RoboRio via IE Max, but we could not find detailed instructions on how that works.  It may only work with the RR 1.0     

So this deep dive looked at all the forums and trying to find solutions, the students gave up.  I spent a few days searching for answers and started to join the forums when I could not solve it directly.

[Dzari]

Any other information you need?

[BoKnows]

If we've never seen it working, I'd want to check one thing with you first.  We've seen several of these threads for the roboRIO 2.0 resolved by a small nuance in those instructions.  I'll admit, it got me the first time too.  

Supported image files are named FRC_roboRIO2_YEAR_VERSION.img.zip. You can locate them by clicking the SD button in the roboRIO Imaging tool and then navigating to the SD Images folder. It is generally best to use the latest version of the image.

I missed the ".img" the first time and used a .zip instead.  It should be a relatively quick troubleshooting step to use the imaging tool to double-check we're using one of the .img.zip images.  If you can do that and still see the flashing red LED, my best theory is the SD card reader is bad and we'll want to process the RMA.  If you do that and the flashing LED goes away, it means we didn't have a good image on the SD cards previously.

To help speed up the process a little if it's the former, are you alright if I send out an email to the address associated with your forum account?  I can send out that email while you're double-checking the image.  If it doesn't work, you're all set to reply immediately and cut out a bit of delay in the back and forth.

Quick edit:  Yes, the reformatting steps you're referencing are related to the roboRIO rather than the roboRIO 2.0.  In those situations, they're trying to reformat the onboard flash.  For the roboRIO 2.0, you'd be reformatting the SD card.  The best way to do that is the steps we're trying here.

[Dzari]

@BoKnows... 

Still looking for help to solve the RoboRio 2.0. 

Can I get return authorization?

David

[BoKnows]

I asked you two questions in the last post.  I need you to answer both of those.

1) Can you verify we're using one of the images with the .img in the title?  As it's easy to miss, it's something we want to make sure we're doing correctly now or we'll see the same problem with a new device.

2) I'd need to contact you.  You've disabled PMs.  As a result, I asked for permission to contact you on the email account associated with your forum account.

[Dzari · Accepted solution]

THANK YOU!!!!!   You found my mistake!!!!!

I am sorry, I missed your last post where you said:

If we've never seen it working, I'd want to check one thing with you first.  We've seen several of these threads for the roboRIO 2.0 resolved by a small nuance in those instructions.  I'll admit, it got me the first time too.  

Supported image files are named FRC_roboRIO2_YEAR_VERSION.img.zip. You can locate them by clicking the SD button in the roboRIO Imaging tool and then navigating to the SD Images folder. It is generally best to use the latest version of the image.

I missed the ".img" the first time and used a .zip instead. 

That was it EXACTLY!   

What got me was the picture in the instructions of Imaging Directly to the microSD Card in the wplib.org which shows a .zip file NOT a .img.zip.  That was it. 

First, I used the .img directly not the .img.zip and flashing Red Status Light is gone.  Then I did the .img.zip and that worked too. 

In both cases I went to the roboRIO Imaging Tool added Team number and Edit Startup Settings.  Current image is now FRC_roboRIO2_2022_v4.0

So one problem solved.

As I tell the students Read the Instructions, I am going to add the caveat in the future of read the instructions and make sure they are consistent in word and images.

Now next week we will download code and see if we can get a robot moving!

Thank you! 

Dave

[BoKnows]

It's good to hear you all are up and running!  Also super glad we figured this out now before getting a replacement.  It would have been incredibly frustrating to get the replacement and then have the issue occurring again. =). 

I'll reach out to my contacts that can edit the wpilib documentation linked to make sure we, as a community, make that more clear.  Conflicting instructions aren't helpful for anyway.  Thanks for pointing that out.

[Epic_Eric]

Hey BoKnows!

We are team 6364 from West Vancouver, BC, Canada, and we have run into multiple RoboRio 2.0 Flashing Status light problems.

When we imaged it, we made sure it's .img or .img.zip in the SD Card, but it doesn't work. We put the SD Card in, it flashes. If we don't, it still flashes. We decided that there's something wrong with the 2 RoboRio 2.0 we have, maybe it's the card reader going haywire, or the internal of the Rios being corrupted.

Anyways, our team desperately need replacement 😞  We have the 1st FRC Tournament of the year, and the programming team is paralyzed because the Rios will not work! Would it be possible for us to send in the 2 Rios and get 2 replacements?

You don't know how grateful our whole team will be if we could fix this problem!

Thank you for answer our question!

Team 6364