cRIO sporadic pausing

[pauldemonkey]

every 5-10 seconds our cRIO stops sending signals to the signal light, the solenoid valve and the jaguars/victors. This pause only lasts for a few ms but it is noticeable and we are not sure whether or not we can fix it. What i mean is the yellow lights on the jaguar, the light that is linked to diagnostic light and the solenoid valve/solenoid controller light all turn off at the same time and then come back on. This happens both tethered and wireless and it seems as if it temporarily loses communication. We assume the system watchdog kicks in only for about 50ms and then reastablishes communication. This happens regardless of program(tested with c++ and labview). i will get a video tonight and upload it later

[BTreece]

Hi Paul,

If I understand what you are saying, it sounds like you are actually seeing a power distribution issue.  When you first power on the robot, the lights on the Jaguars begin blinking.  If you disconnect them from the digital side car (therefore disconnecting the cRIO from the Jaguar) do you still cut out periodically?  If you could post a video, that would be very helpful.

Brandon T.

National Instruments

[pauldemonkey]

i will try, its difficult to spot when the jaguar lights are flashing, which is what they will do when disconnected/disabled. another thing is we have swaped out every major component except the crio(including power distribution board and battery)

[BTreece]

One thing that you could try doing is to write a digital out to a single pin, and wire that to a chart and see if you can see the dip.  Also, refer to this link for our updated safety tutorial if you think that you are having issues with the watchdog. 

Brandon T.

National Instruments

[pauldemonkey]

alright i will look at that, so i noticed the compressor kicked off too(hooked through the spike relay and thus the digital sidecar) when wired directly to the power distribution board it no longer kicked off. so could the power dip be coming from the crio?

[BTreece]

I would run a test program that outputs to a waveform chart to see what is going on.  A video would also be helpful in seeing the behavior.

Brandon T.

National Instruments