RoboRIO 1 safe mode activates, but cannot upload firmware

[ftc8124code]

We have a RoboRIO 1:

In normal boot, Status and RSL illuminate for approx 6 seconds, then status goes out. No activity observed on USB or Ether ports (no negotiation logged on linux, no DHCP polling, etc). Firmware tool does not find the unit.

Safe mode does enable via rest button, with status light giving 3 flash sequence. But same behavior: no activity on USB or Ether, firmware tool cannot find.

Inserting USB stick with recovery.cfg file and attempting boot with reset held shows some brief activity on USB drive LED after releasing reset button, but then status light to go to continuous flashing, and still no change to symptoms following reboot. Attempted with multiple USB cables, multiple known good USB sticks (32GB and 2GB). Tried with partition table formatted and no partition table. FAT32.

Please advise.

[mshafer · Accepted solution]

Hi ftc8124code,

This is Matthew from NI. Thanks for posting on the forumns.

If a USB reset start continuous flashing, the roboRIO and USB weren't able to agree on a timing.

Can you try other USB drives? (we've found older/cheaper ones to work best).

[ftc8124code]

OK. After searching the sofa for old USB drives etc, finally found an old no-name multicard reading device + an old 256MB SD card + USB cable combination managed to get past the initial stage. It appeared to read data from the card for 30 seconds ish, then status light went out for a bit and finally came back on with a repeating 2 flash sequence every 2 seconds or so.

What does this mean? I think I saw mention of the 2 flash pattern in a previous post but I can't find it now.

Thanks

[mshafer]

Blinking in two's is "software error, reimage roborio" -> https://docs.wpilib.org/en/2020/docs/hardware/hardware-basics/status-lights-ref.html

Can you try imaging the roboRIO using the imaging tool now?

[ftc8124code]

Could not detect the device from the imaging tool via USB cable, despite trying multiple PCs and multiple cables, and in both normal (showing 2 blinks) and safe mode (3 blinks).

Then connected to LAN via ethernet port while in 2-blink state and imaging tool then found the device. It was showing no image and firmware version 2.0.0f2

Proceeded to successfully update to firmware 6.0.0.f1, and then was able to format device with frc2022_v4.0 image.

Now able to boot RoboRIO normally and access its web console via its IP address on the LAN.

However, still cannot detect the device via USB cable only from the imaging tool, even with other interfaces disabled and running with administrator privileges. Is this a concern?

Thank you for your assistance.

[mshafer]

It is completely doable to only use the networking cable (I know several teams that do it).

If the USB port continues to not connect (but you would like one that does) we could RMA the device.

[ftc8124code]

OK Thank you. We will do some more testing to see if it might be on the Windows PC side. For example, I notice there is no NI Network Adapter showing up as mentioned at https://docs.wpilib.org/en/stable/docs/zero-to-robot/step-3/imaging-your-roborio.html