Chromebooks Having Issues Downloading to Brain

VEX V5 Technical Support
1

Hello all,

We have a few students who are having issues downloading their code to their robot’s brain. For some background, we have Lenovo Chromebook 500e gen2s and 3s, and V5. Students are using the Web Store version of the app. The web-based app doesn’t seem to be too reliable at the moment for us for this particular issue.

What happens is they have their robot plugged in and the download button within the app is there and clickable, and it works the first time. Then, they unplug the robot and do some testing, and when they plug the robot back in to edit their code, this time the download button isn’t there.

Just wondering if this is expected behavior or something that we can potentially fix.

We’ve found that (this is with the robot plugged in after the download button does not reappear, mind you) if the student saves their code, completely exits out of the app, relaunches and reopens their code, the download button is there, however, I don’t believe this is a reasonable solution if they’re making multiple edits to their code every few minutes as according to the teacher, this was not always the situation.

I’m willing to pin this on ChromeOS and being funky with USB connected devices, but I’d like to hear if anyone else is experiencing this as well. Our Chromebooks are running anywhere between v. 121 and the latest 123. Troubleshooting with the class yesterday found a couple running 122 having issues, and 123 not having issues at all, however I’m not fully convinced that a simple OS update will resolve this…

Thanks for your time and all help is appreciated!!

1 Like
2

You should try plugging the cable into the controller instead of the Brian or swapping the cable being used to code with. I believe my sister team was having trouble downloading their code as well. Your brain may also just need a firmware update. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
3

are you guys at the national robotics challenge? because we are and we had the same problem. if so, its the heat. move over to the concession stands where it is cooler, and it will work just fine.

4

We will certainly give the controllers a try over directly plugging into the brains, and also look into updating the brains’ firmware. We’re currently not at a challenge, just working on code at our school. Thank you both!

5

I’m sorry to hear that you are having these issues. This is not the expected behavior. VEXcode should handle disconnecting and reconnecting the V5 Brain without having to close and reopen the app.

If you get the issue to happen again, can you please submit feedback from the machine having the issue.

image
image517×738 37.6 KB

Make sure that the option to include diagnostic data is checked and the message references this post.

This will include some information about what VEXcode is seeing when looking for the brain and what it thinks it should be displaying. This will help us to figure out where and what the issue is.

6 Likes
6

Thank you! I’ve sent this along to the robotics teacher and asked her to have those students encountering this to submit that feedback form.