Awhile ago our V5 Brain started white screening and not staying on. It would white screen, and then it would shut off. When we tried to turn it on it would either not turn on or it would turn on and within 5 seconds shut off again. We changed the brain after it happened once and it did it again with the New Brain. Has this happened to anyone else?
This is very frequent in competitions, and white-screening is an effect of static shock in the Brain’s electrical system. I would suggest mounting your brain using plastic mounts to keep distance from metal.
I have to be blunt, there’s little you can do about this problem in regular VRC. You can try to reduce the issue but you’re just going to have to accept that your Brain will whitescreen sometimes as this is just how the V5 system is with its bad ESD protection measures.
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Is this also related to it shutting off and not coming back on?
White screening usually makes the V5 system non-responsive. You may have to physically unplug the battery to shut off the brain when it’s in white screen. That is also why matches are able to get replays if a V5 Brain white-screens because it’s that frequent.
It’s not known for sure what causes white screens actually from my memory. I believe @jpearman was able to replicate whitescreens by interrupting power to the brain for a short period of time. With that in mind, @DigoryDale have you tried replacing the battery cable in use? If the connection is loose then that could potentially cause white screens.
Yes, the only way I could ever reproduce was short interruption of power, far shorter than you can achieve just by unplugging and replugging the battery, somewhere around 10uS to 20uS.
The team I mentor (or technically used to mentor as covid messed all that up) had 2 or 3 white screens at a competition a couple a years ago, I had them replace battery and battery cable and they were ok for the rest of the day, make of that what you will.
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in my experience, whitescreens usually happen when a robot makes contact with another robot or the field perimeter. This might indicate that sharp impacts can lead to that brief power interruption, but I’ve also noticed that they seem to happen in static-heavy environments, and I’ve seen them occur when someone touches a completely still robot and receives a static shock, which would indicate a static-related cause. Maybe it’s a static surge through the battery cable? I don’t have any quantitative evidence of this, but it seems to line up with my observations.
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It was the battery cable, we used a new one and it worked fine.
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Good to hear, that’s another data point to add to the list. I’ll make sure to recommend that to teams that whitescreen at competitions I volunteer at.
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Does your brain happen to be mounted close to the ground? Like any part of the brain 1.5 inches or closer?
No, our brain is by the top of our robot.
We figured it out, like Peters.presto20 said we changed the battery cable and now it works amazingly! Thank you all for your help!
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