Hi, I’ve encountered a problem that I’ve never experienced in the past three years. After downloading a program and attempting to run it, the brain completely freezes. Whether I click the run button from VEXcode or directly from the brain, it becomes unresponsive. The only way to reset it is by physically removing and replugging the battery.
Initially, I thought it was an issue with just one brain. However, after connecting a second brain—which had been working perfectly fine until I connected it to an iPad with the latest VEXcode IQ 4.0.3-7 update—it started having the same problem.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to fix this: power cycling, force-updating the firmware, connecting via cable to a computer with the updated VEXcode, and even deleting all the programs on the brain. Despite this, the issue persists. Both brains freeze as soon as I download and run any program, even something as simple as one line of code or a VEX example.
Has anyone else experienced this? For context, one of the problematic brains is three years old, and the other was recently purchased in May—both are 2nd generation models.
Thank you. I’ve already reinstalled VexCode IQ and tried forcing a firmware update on both brains, but it’s not working. Also I’ve tried to use two different computers (Mac and Windows) with two different cables.
Here’s the update on my test: I tried the newly updated VexCode on my Windows laptop with my 3rd Vex IQ brain, and it worked perfectly fine for downloading and running a program.
So, the issue seems to be isolated to the two brains that had programs downloaded from the iPad (it’s not my ipad and I have to wait to test it on this iPad later next week). The strange thing is even after forcing firmware updates, the two brains won’t restore.
I don’t believe it’s a hardware problem, as technical support suggested. It feels more like a firmware issue, possibly related to an I/O or communication protocol. My guess is that when the iPad downloaded the program, it might have modified a driver or file involved in running programs. I suspect that the force firmware update which VexCode provides didn’t address that part of the system, which is why these two brains always crash when the ‘Run’ button is pressed.
Is there a way to force a complete reset, like a factory reset, for the 2nd generation brain? I know the 1st generation has an option to revert to factory settings directly on the brain.
If you want to factory reset the brain you have to go to settings then swipe right and you will find an option called RESET. Be warned, this will delete all the data on the brain including language preferences, programs and rest.
Thank you! I reset all the brains, and now everything is back to normal . I’m just wondering why I never see the factory reset option on the right. I’ll check again next week when I have the iPad connected to them, but at least I don’t need to worry about any repair issues with the brains anymore.
factory reset will not delete programs. It will reset language, drive settings, controller pair id etc. but programs are not deleted. The trash can “delete all” will delete all programs as well as the Python VM.
You probably had a corrupted Python VM, however, you had said.
so I had assumed you had already used the “delete all” button and had the VM reloaded.
. I’m just wondering why I never see the factory reset option on the right. I’ll check again next week when I have the iPad connected to them, but at least I don’t need to worry about any repair issues with the brains anymore.