Common Mistakes & Troubleshooting
Every veteran team has a mental checklist of the failures that bite rookies every single year: the robot that won't connect, the 'No Robot Code' message, the dreaded brownout, dead CAN devices, wheels spinning the wrong way, and bumpers that fail inspection. This module turns those hard-won lessons into a systematic debugging workflow. Each lesson gives you the symptom, the real root causes, the exact diagnostic steps (RioLog, Driver Station tabs, Glass, REV/Phoenix tools), and the fix — grounded in the official WPILib troubleshooting docs and the 2026 game manual rules.
Common Mistakes & Troubleshooting is module 6 of 7 in the Getting Started with FRC guide. It picks up where Worked Examples & Mini-Projects left off and hands over to Advanced Techniques & Case Studies. Its 5 lessons are about 165 minutes of the guide's ~17 hours.
In this module
5 lessons
Jargon check
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.
- InspectionThe required check that a robot meets size, weight, safety, and rules before it can compete.
- Driver Station DSThe NI software (and the physical station) that connects driver inputs to the robot and reports status during matches.
- BumpersThe mandatory padded protective bumpers around a robot's frame, colored red or blue to match the alliance.
- WPILibThe official, free software library for programming FRC robots in Java, C++, or Python (RobotPy).
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This is the Getting Started with FRC one — 5 lessons, about 165 minutes. The departments below run a module by the same name over completely different material.
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