Electrical & WiringModule 6 of 8

Common Mistakes & Troubleshooting

Most robots that die on the field die for boring, preventable electrical reasons: a loose CAN wire, a battery that sagged, a tinned wire backing out of a WAGO, a brownout from uncapped current. This module is a field guide to the real failures FRC electrical teams hit, with a repeatable debugging workflow, the LED-and-Driver-Station signals that point you at the cause, and the specific fixes. Learn to read your robot's symptoms instead of guessing.

Common Mistakes & Troubleshooting is module 6 of 8 in the Electrical & Wiring guide. It picks up where Worked Examples & Mini-Projects left off and hands over to Advanced Techniques & Case Studies. Its 5 lessons are about 150 minutes of the guide's ~14 hours.

5 lessons~150 min35 lessons in this guide

Start with lesson 1 All of Electrical & Wiring

In this module

5 lessons

01Reading the Lights: A Diagnostic Decision TreeTurn the roboRIO, PD, and motor controller LEDs into a fast diagnosis of what is actually wrong.25 min read

02Brownouts: Why the Robot Goes LimpUnderstand the multi-stage brownout protection and the systematic fixes, from current limits to battery health.35 min read

03CAN Bus Failures: Intermittent Devices and Dropped CommsFind and fix the loose connections, ID conflicts, missing termination, and over-utilization that kill CAN devices.35 min read

04Connection Mistakes: WAGOs, Crimps, and Strip LengthsThe physical-connection errors that cause resistance, dropouts, and inspection failures, and how to do each connection right.30 min read

05The Pre-Match and Post-Crash ChecklistsRepeatable checklists that catch failures in the pit before they cost you a match, and a fast triage after a hard hit.25 min read

Previous moduleWorked Examples & Mini-Projects

Next moduleAdvanced Techniques & Case Studies

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FRC terms used in Common Mistakes & Troubleshooting

CAN busController Area Network — the wiring/protocol that lets motor controllers, sensors, and the roboRIO communicate on one daisy-chained bus.

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10 other departments use this module name

This is the Electrical & Wiring one — 5 lessons, about 150 minutes. The departments below run a module by the same name over completely different material.

Longer reads

Articles that go deeper on this

FRC "No Robot Code" & Driver Station Won't Connect: Full Fix ChecklistA verified, step-by-step FRC troubleshooting decision tree for "No Robot Code" and a Driver Station that won't connect to the roboRIO — most common causes first.7 min read

WPILib Won't Deploy: Every Cause and How to Fix ItYour WPILib deploy is failing? Work the decision tree: wrong folder in VS Code, team number, roboRIO image, JDK version, macOS network privacy. Fixes for each.13 min read

All 8 modules in Electrical & Wiring

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