Broken RoboRio

[pbrownhg]

Our Robo Rio stopped functioning and it coincided when the kids were drilling aluminum above the unit.  We had told them to always cover it, but they forgot.  We have tried many things to get it going but cannot.  Please help as we do not have a spare.  We are team 8081.

[pbrownhg]

Is there anyone from NI that can help?  We are desperate as our comp is soon and we do not have a roborio.  We have borrowed one from another team, but need to give it back.  Do I need to add any info?  I notice other peoples issues are getting addressed and assigned to NI personal.  I feel like I am doing something wrong not to get attention?

[EstebanSanarrucia]

Hi,

My name is Esteban Sanarrucia from NI, I apologize for the delay in my response.

Could you please let me know the LED status of the roboRIO? If it is solid red, it means there is metal debris inside the unit. Follow these steps:

Turn the roboRIO upside down and shake it vigorously.
Vacuum out the ports on the roboRIO.
Use canned air or compressed air to clear the hardware pinouts.
Check with a flashlight for any material making contact in the port pinouts.

[pbrownhg]

We did use compressed air and did all those things at the time and could not get it going.  I would need to go to the school to report the led status, but from what I remember there wasn't much going on and really broken.  Not exactly my area of expertise.  I am the mechanical mentor and the teacher is the programmer/elecrical mentor but he can not easily participate in the forum here.  I will relay the questions, but there were a lot of things tried and nothing seemed to work.

[pbrownhg]

Thanks for helping us, by the way.

[EstebanSanarrucia]

Don't worry I will wait for the LED status. You're welcome and again I apologize for the delay in my response.

[pbrownhg]

Will have it to you this morning yet...

[pbrownhg]

...so I was able to finally talk with our lead programmer and he has given me a more accurate but completely different story which is much more accurate.  Here is what he said,

Probably not alum chips.  We are getting out of memory errors.  The robot code then crashes and enters this loop of crash and restart, crash and restart until we reboot the rio.  Then it is good for a bit (2min to 30min)  then it starts again.  It has also alarmed us to know we do not have a spare. We wanted to buy a spare from Andymark but they are out of stock until after all the competitions and it will be too late.

We are willing to buy a spare, and are very concerned about the unit in the robot.  Can you advise on if there is a fix for the problem and if we can also get a spare somehow?

[pbrownhg]

One other note....  We do have another broken Rio with a CanBus problem.  If it helps to send that one back for repair, I wanted to a least suggest this.

[pbrownhg]

Esteban, will you be able to reply sometime this morning on next steps?