Dead Ports?

[dale.crowder]

I keep being told by my teams that their brains have dead ports. Is there a utility or device someone has made to test the brains and the port functionality.

I keep telling them to make a new cable, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. I even tried making a new cable to no avail. I’ve been an IT admin for 25 years, I’ve made my share of cables.

Hoping to find some guidance here.

Most of the brains are 4+ years old. But even the 2 new that we bought this year are among those I’m being told have “bad ports”.

[lacsap]

• Check inside port if debris
• Check inside port if bent pins

Remind teams not to cut metal on robot without covering brain and exposed ports.

End of the day, some ports over time get zapped. Best practice is to label bad ports.

[evasnphysics]

old post on the topic… whether it is fatigue or damage from a poorly crimped cable end, pins will not make or lose contact quite often.

Thought we had dead ports from ESD... Prong were just bent

Over the past few years I’ve had numerous teams tell me that a port on the brain had died. I had read so much about ESD damage that I always assumed it was the cause and would tell them to mark it as dead and reprogram for another port. Well I finally got around to checking our spare brains for dead ports that were never marked. I found some unmarked dead ports and quite a few with loose connection. The loose connections were being caused by the metal prongs inside of the brain’s RJ11 ports bei…