Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Perhaps a Faraday cage can be place over the robots from the teams who keep insisting on setting up a WiFi network each year.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

If other teams can find workarounds for not having wifi you can too! You just need to be...
CREATIVE!

P.S I've always wanted to do that...

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Not if you use T-Mobile.
It doesn't cost me anything extra to use my T-Mobile data plan in Toronto.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Yep thats the word I was looking for. I agree they will more then likely say no of course.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

FrankJ knows what's up!

In my years working with field setup and the FTA's on Thursday and Wednesday night, we will often have a end of night wifi hunt, where we track down the rogue wifi hotspots in the pits and shut them down. ::rtm::

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

We just wrap the robot radio in aluminum foil. It's a lot easier.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Maybe alicen can do what MrRoboSteve is suggesting. That will put an end to it pretty quickly. :D

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

So you go war driving for rogue access points prior to Stronghold?
This is very militaristic :D

I really still think it would benefit FIRST to put someone in charge of getting Internet to the events rather than have people doing all sorts of strange things to get an advantage.

Hey I have a silly question - would FIRST have an issue if a venue hosting a district event offered wired Internet in the pits?

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

2959 did get permission to setup a venue wide hotspot last year (hopefully this year as well). To do that though we had a lot of restrictions and we had a network engineer manning it to make sure the signals didn't interfere with each other. So you might get permission provided you can bring $20,000 worth of equipment and a certified network engineer. :)

And even then the equipment was overwhelmed and was only so so. If we get the opportunity again this year we are bringing more antennas.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

It would be difficult working around 4.13 Site Restrictions, bullet 5.

Do not arrange for Internet access or phone lines from venue service providers or attempt to use venue internet connections reserved for event purposes (e.g., FMS or streaming).

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Look at that a different way - it restricts the teams from arranging for Internet access or phone lines. It does not restrict the -venue- from providing said Internet.

Also it wouldn't be WiFi. It would wired. So all one needs is a box of CAT5 and enough switches/switch ports assuming the venue provides an Internet connection.

I am pretty sure I am a tad over-qualified to install a campus wired network ;)
If not there are a few: colleges, ISP and financial institutions around here that wouldn't be working.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

Our programmers are currently looking at periodically using NFC to sync data between our tablets and a master tablet. The master tablet would then have a Roam Mobility plan to get the data back to the cloud:

https://www.roammobility.com/

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

I looked into it further, but I am still left with questions. Can you control the smart home devices via their native apps, and if so, does it allow for data transfer to a computer using OBEX FTP? Does it allow for a PAN/LAN like setup so they can access a FTP server on my laptop? I know it isn't released yet, but if someone can point me in the right direction, thanks.

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

As a note to those of you considering Bluetooth, keep in mind that Bluetooth operates in the same 2.4GHz frequency range as traditional WiFi. While potentially harder for field staff to detect (as a WiFi scanner will not see it), if it is detected you will likely be told to stop using it.

I came across an interesting paper that describes, amongst other things, how WiFi and Bluetooth interact with each other: http://www.hp.com/rnd/library/pdf/Wi...oexistance.pdf

Re: Some questions on the legality of Wifi
 

The FRC field is not 2.4GHz it is 5GHz.
Of this I can be pretty sure as I have been a CSA/FTAA.

However feel free to take FIRST's word on it:
http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-frc-qanda.pdf
See Q301.

Keep in mind the field security monitoring tools can still detect the 2.4GHz spectrum but usually we don't police it.

When there were issues in the past with the interference the source that caused the most public examples were all interacting with the 5GHz spectrum. Airport radar can also interfere with the top few channels of that 5GHz spectrum.

Also this 802.11n supports channel bonding which is usually turned on but occasionally has been turned off in the past.
So that means that your robots can use 2 channels of that spectrum to get extra radio bandwidth.
That still does not remove the 7Mb limit imposed between your robot and the field.
That bandwidth restriction is imposed not at the radio level but at the protocol level.