roborio unrecoverable error, COMM light off and won't come back on

[johndoe7588]

Hello,

I'm currently facing a problem with the RoboRIO I'm unable to fix. I heard there was a recovery file I may need from an NI employee, so this is my post asking for it. Here is my predicament:

The roborio2 was flashed via sd card (balena etcher) for first time and then worked great for a few days. No problems at all. I then ran a few tests with a certain function in the code, and periodically logged a message. This logging eventually caused the program to crash, and upon further boots the riolog said “.jar invalid” or something along the sort (don’t have exact log unfortunately, I'm an idiot and didn’t save). I tried power cycling, didn’t work. Then reflashed SD card again, and since then the rio hasn’t connected to driver station, and COMM light has remained off. I cannot connect via USB wire, wifi, or by reflashing/imaging via the imaging tool. I don't know what to do at this point and time is an urgency, so if anyone knows how to fix please do impart your knowledge, thank you!

[mshafer]

Hi 7588,

Thanks for posting. For the roborio 2, the "reset" option is to re-image the SD card (https://docs.wpilib.org/en/stable/docs/software/roborio-info/roborio2-imaging.html) and then set the team number via the imaging tool, and reploy the code (maybe without the logging??). 

[johndoe7588]

Hi,

Thank you for the reply. However, I have re-imaged the SD card and set the team number multiple times via the RoboRIO team setter 2022 (not the imaging tool, which I will try today). I have a feeling that this is not the error, but I will try today and update here, thank you. I think there may be an underlying error, possibly unrecoverable/corrupt firmware beyond flashing.

[mshafer · Accepted solution]

Another thing to check when you try this - with the original roboRIO, if the "console out" was enabled and anything was plugged into one of the serial ports (RS232, SPI, I2C, or the serial pins on the MXP header), the rio wouldn't boot correctly (because it would try to communicate with the connected device and get invalid instructions).

If you have anything connected to those ports, try powering down, removing them, then powering on.

[johndoe7588]

Is it too much to say I love you? Your fix worked after days of breaking my head trying to figure this out, turns out if I turn off console out and then apply the team change, it worked. The COMM light is now back on and Driver Station is communicating. It's weird since we didn't have anything in the ports you mentioned (only power and the USB-B cable to connect to laptop, but without unchecking that box I wasn't able to apply the team change. 

Should I leave enable console out as unchecked or checked off from now on? What does it do?

Thank you so much once again, I truly appreciate it.

[mshafer]

>  What does it do?

It tells the rio to output the console (and accept input) via the serial ports - this can be used to communicate with the rio. (An example is to use a serial to USB adapter and connect to the rio via Putty).

> Should I leave enable console out as unchecked or checked off from now on?

If you are able to have it be on in your robot (i.e., don't have something plugged into those ports that needs to communicate with your application), consider leaving it on because an FTA or CSA could use it to attempt to diagnose connection issues.

However, if you are unable to run the robot with it on, go ahead and turn it off (if you're having field connectivity issues and the FTA or CSA wants to look at this, they can work with you to enable it to do the diagnostics and then disable it again).