Troubleshooting: Robot issues after robot offline for an extended period

Owned by Daniel Crosby (Deactivated), created
Last updated: Nov 11, 2021
2 min read

Problem

Robots that have been offline for an extended period of time and that do not have a connection to the RoboKind management server may have issues when attempting to connect to WiFi or when attempting to run a network test.

Presentation

This issue generally presents under the following circumstances:

  • Robot software is out of date (release versions earlier than 3.2.6)

  • Robot has been in storage or otherwise powered off for a long period of time.

  • The firewall is blocking ports used to allow the robot to connect to our servers, or the robot is otherwise disconnected from the Internet.

  • Possible symptoms:

    • When running a network test, a FAIL error occurs on Server #3.

    • Robot may fail to fully boot up within 5 minutes, and stay on the RoboKind page.

    • Attempts to connect the robot to a new Wi-Fi router fails.

Troubleshooting steps:

  1. If possible, connect the robot to an Ethernet network, reset the robot (button on back) and then use Utilities - Update Software after rebooting. After the robot is updated to version 3.2.8, it will be able to connect to WiFi.

  2. (IT department assistance recommended)  Save the attached autorun-r25 file to a cleanly formatted USB drive. Insert into the back of the fully booted robot and listen for “Success. Please update your robot now.”

    1. If after inserting the drive you do not hear anything from the robot, possible causes include:

      1. The attached script might be saved with a .txt extension or otherwise, the file name should be exactly “autorun-r25”.

      2. The USB drive in question may not be compatible or formatted differently; please test with a different drive or see Troubleshooting - USB Flash Drive

      3. The volume on the robot is set too low, try using the volume up on the back of the robot to check the volume.

  • A robot can be temporarily connected to a WiFi hotspot/tethered device (thus allowing a temporary connection to our management server). After rebooting the robot, repeat the network test. Utilities - Network - Test Network     RoboKind Quick Robot Network Setup Guide

If the above solutions are not practical, please notify us at Service Desk - Report Robot Issue with your shipping name & address, and we will send a USB drive that will apply the latest update to the robot.

Advanced Troubleshooting:

  • (IT department request) An organizations network firewall is temporarily enabled to allow the robot to contact our management server at cypress.robokind.us (72.249.182.162) over UDP port 1194, after which a robot will download the update from our server upon being rebooted.

Note: The network test (Utilities - Network - Test Network) contains a test named Support Server. Robots can generally function with this test failing, however it may occasionally necessitate (as indicated above) the need for a workaround.