FTC Wirless Router Question

[Greg Shaw]

I am the lead mentor for a rookie FTC team. Tomorrow we are hoping to drive our robot for the first time and I am confused about how the Field Control System works. The FTC Field Control system manual refers to a wireless router. Here is my question: Does our laptop act as a router when it has downloaded the Field Control System software or do we need to buy a wireless router? Also, if anyone wishes to include a short explanation of how the field controls system interacts with the Samantha wireless unit I would appreciate. I am looking over the Field Control System manual and i am confused. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help tomorrow be productive. I am worried that we will spend our entire 3 hours trying to get the wireless to work. My students could really use the morale boost that comes from seeing the robot work.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Others will post with more info but you need to set up a network either via a router or ad hoc on the laptop. The samantha is a wireless access point so to speak and you must connect it to your network. There is a protocol that uses a USB drive and cycling the Samantha that flashes the network config file. The sequence uses the red white blue LEDs on the Samantha to show progress.

The Samantha is just a pass through device in the eyes of the user. One could consider it to be a USB over wifi type connection. Google, Bing on the terms Samantha FTC and you'll reach John Toebes pages on the development of this device by Cisco.

[JB987]

Be sure to check out the FTC forums...there is a whole thread of Samantha posts that might help you out:

http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/