Problems opening more than 4 motors with FRC Labview 2014

[sraque]

We are having issues opening more than four motors of any type.

-Labview FRC 2014 (freshly downloaded from here: https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-34731)

-Either 4 slot or 8 slot cRIO

-Clean robot project of any drive type

-mulitple computers with the labview install and FRC update

The behavior we are seeing is that the base project works correctly. For example, the mechanum project runs four motors fine. However, if we open a fifth motor (just open), then none of the motors will work. IN particular, when we enable the robot, all the motor controllers (jags) continue to blink yellow. We have tried using different PWM ports, and different sidecars, and just about every veteran programmer who is still in the local area. All to no avail. We are to the point where we think there is some sort of unintended crippling in the labview environment.

Any help is appreciated.

[DAQjr]

Please attach the project that is failing.

[sraque]

Project is attached.

It is a stock mecanum project with a disable struct around the opening of a fifth motor in begin. This project will work. Remove the dasble struct, and when enabled, the jags will remain in the disconnected "blinking" state.

-Steve

Message was edited by: sraque

[DAQjr]

So far I don't see anything in your project that is sticking out as wrong. Do you get any errors out on the Driver Station?

There is certainly not an intentional crippling. As for unintentional, I also think no, but if it's unintentional it would probably be more appropriate to call it a bug that crippling. Let's keep tracking it down.

[sraque]

Yes, there was an error associated with the 4 motors vi. My bad for not writing it down and brining it home. We did extensive google searching on it, but couldn't find an explanation (something like -49005), but we'll get a firm text capture on Wednesday or earlier.

Yes, I certainly didn't think it would be intentional crippling. More like something that just didn't get unlocked in the registration process somehow.

Thanks for the help!

-Steve

[sciencewhiz · Accepted solution]

This is a classic symptom of a digital sidecar that isn't powered. Disconnect every cable from the digital sidecar except power and verify all 3 power LEDs are brightly lit.

[sraque]

I will check the LEDs this Wednesday when we have our regular meeting. However, it is unlikely that is the cause since we have observed this behavior with completely different setups (one iwth a 4-slot rio and another with an 8 slot rio) including 3 different sidecars.

[sraque]

We are now not seeing any error codes. We tried multiple ways to implement five motors and none produced error codes. We also looked back in the browser history where we were Google searching the error codes, but it was too long ago.

So, my question: is anybody able to open five motors using this version of FRC labview? I'd like to hear if someone can take our code, and get it to work on a CRIO.

[sraque]

We not only had 3 bad sidecars, we had many. It turns out that once we found a single good sidecar, it worked.