Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing problems with either the Student Robotics hardware or python library you should check here first to see if there is a simple solution. If you don’t find the information you need in this section you can use Discord to get help with your specific problem.

1. sr.robot3 python library issues — Common problems with the sr.robot3 python library and possible solutions.
2. Interactive Troubleshooter — Consider using the Interactive Troubleshooter to narrow down your problem and find a solution.

General Troubleshooting Tips

Simplify the task

By reducing the complexity of whatever you’re trying to do, the chances that you’ve overlooked something are smaller. It also allows you to rule out a collection of things which could be causing the issue and makes the system easier to understand.

In turn, that means that if you do need to get help from someone else you don’t need to spend a long time explaining what’s going on.

Explain it to someone else

By explaining the system to someone else, even (and for some reason especially) an inanimate object, you’re forced to think about each piece of the system and describe what it does and how it works.

This often leads you to realise which part of the system isn’t working, without any actual input from the other person.

Check the log file for errors

If your program has an error in it, it will stop running or not run at all. Check the log file on the USB stick to see any error reports.

Print all the things

Adding print statements into the code you’re working on allows you to track the progress of the system while it is running. When working on non-software systems other mechanisms are used to achieve the same goal — LEDs commonly used for this in electronics hardware, and this is part of the reason our boards are covered in them.

On the robots the output from any print(...) statements will end up in the log file, which can be viewed on the USB stick.

Check the docs

It’s very easy to end up thinking that you know how something works and then forget something out of familiarity.

By double-checking the appropriate docs (be it for the kit, for Python or for the extra thing you’ve bought) you can be completely sure that you’ve not missed something.