Multiple controller & brain errors during matches

VEX V5 Technical Support
#1

Hey so recently my team competed in a tournament in which we had multiple issues regarding our brain and controller.

A few days ago, we tried coding autonomous but no autonomous code would run and we would keep getting jumptable errors. I updated the firmware on the brain and this seemed to fix our issues. I also updated the radio and controller firmware too. Before this firmware fix we were also getting other issues like our flywheel motors constantly changing speeds for no reason, if we pressed Y on our controller our whole code would freeze, and in general inputs and motors would just often stop working intermittently.

But during yesterday’s tournament we kept getting more errors despite having updated the firmware. During matches our whole code would freeze up again, motors not spinning when they should have (one time our flywheel just didn’t turn on despite the motors being plugged in and recognized). At one point our pneumatics just completely stopped working too and only after a power cycle did they work like normal again. Then our controller kept freezing, not charging, struggling to keep a charge, turning off randomly and having flickering artifacts on the screen.

We have tested with multiple batteries & cables, still the same issues. The only overheating issues we’ve had is one of our flywheel motors hitting level 1 overheating temperature but it barely happens.

To me these both just seem like hardware issues now, but I would like to know if there are any other ways/things I should troubleshoot software or hardware wise to fix things.

#2

Best thing in my mind would be to make a separate program with all the drive and motor codes, no autonomous, and a feature to print your values to print console on computer. Then, have a teammate pick up the bot and run everything a bit, while screen recording the print console and videoing the controller. Then, play back both videos with the same start point, and look for things that are not right, like certain variables or motor temperatures. A big thing to look for would be a motor receiving power but not moving, for example the flywheel not spinning but the motors are receiving 10 volts.

Other than that, try changing ports. They can sometimes get fried due to static buildup caused by driving on carpet. I have no idea what could affect your battery like that in your controller, though. Hope this helps!

#3

Thanks! Will try monitoring everything next driving session then. But we have no autonomous code at the moment so that isn’t the issue. And yeah I’m not sure if we have the anti static field tiles at our club room yet so it is possible some of our ports could be broken.