1st Hardware Test Successful

This afternoon we completed our first test of the new hardware. We ran into a couple problems because we didn't start by following the instructions step by step. Last week we all knew of "things" that we had to do, and everyone started doing what they felt needed to be done. We would have saved ourselves some time had we just followed the directions.

The first thing we did was connect the Driver Station and we immediately updated it's firmware. We shouldn't have done that, but we got around it. At our last meeting we realized we were doing things out of order and tried to get back on track. Our goal was to complete the "bench top" test, but now we had upgraded the firmware in the Driver Station, and it didn't work when we connected it to the cRIO.

From FRC 2009 Hardware

We soon realized that we needed to upgrade the firmware in the cRIO so that it would be compatible with the updated Driver Station. After fiddling with the IP addresses of the cRIO (and getting our team number correct) we were able to download the new firmware to the cRIO.

From FRC 2009 Hardware

Shortly after the update we were able to power up the system and we were getting good signals from all components. We had 2 joysticks connected to the Driver Station and we were able to drive both CIM motors independently (as expected).

From FRC 2009 Hardware

In the end, we completed the "bench top" test with updated versions of the firmware.

I was hoping that by today we would have been able to connect wirelessly to the robot network, but I am happy that we at least were able to control the motors.

Unfortunately tomorrow is the end of school for the holidays and we will not be meeting again until kick-off. I feel good that we made progress, but I wanted more. :)