Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Hey,

since Kevin Watson is referring to this Serial Link on his Website I was wondering if it might be legal to use this during competition to get a little closer connection between your laptop and your FRC Controler?

http://www.sparkfun.com/shop/index.p...p=1&itemid=307

Thx for every answer!

PS: For the ones that are still waiting for the Release of my Monitoring Program stay tuned. I got a little trouble with an ocx file that I'm using on some other computers but I think its solveable ...

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

At FIRST competitions all wireless communication including the use of walkie talkie radios is banned.

And before 10 people reply saying that you need wireless communication for your match, i know [and i would hope that it is obvious] and that is the only instance where its allowed.

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

: ( ... Too bad ... No Process Outsourcing to a Laptop : / ...

The other thing I'm a little courious about: Is the Dashboard Ouput Hardware Control or could I get a Handle on this via Software? I captured the packages that are sent over it and I think it's possible to decrypt them in order to view them with a little nicer program (since numbers and panic to work that well together in competition ^^).

Is there any chance to do something like this? Where das the Dashboard Output get it's Information from? The Radio Input somhow or? And that should be accessible somehow or not?

Thanks for your help, dunno why my mouse wasn't able to hit the search button earlie, sry ^^ ...

Bye

Felix

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

nevermind I think I found it myself this time ...

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

There is no need to outsource processing to laptop. Put a computer on your robot and even with an old computer (I am looking at using a 386) it would actually be just as fast because it is the serial link that limits the speed.

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Hmm that is actually a pretty neat Idea. I didn't think about that yet. But it seems like it would require a good amount of work and may has some disadvantages. Since what OS are you running on the Laptop? An Old Windows or some Linux? If yes how are you doing Serial Communication with that? How do you prevent the Hardrive from beeing fried when beeing hit a lot by other robots. But besides that the only problem that I see is the weight that a Laptop has ^^ ...

Do you have solutions to the problems I see?

Bye

Felix

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

What about the use of cell phones and pagers?

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

good question. I guess cell phones are operating at completly different ranges and shouldn't be a problem, but I could be wrong on that.

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Rule check... Section 7: At the Event has nothing about cell phones. However, I can't remember what the rules were in past years. I'd say better safe than sorry (as in, keep use to a minimum inside...).

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Cell phones are normally on a venue to venue answer. Normally the Pit Announcer will make a comment if cell phone use is becoming a problem at the event. I know personally anytime i need to use my phone i will either go outside or far away from the field, so it poses less of a problem (if one at all) and also so i can hear whoever is on the phone.

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

Well if he is going with a linux install, maybe a 2gb CompactFlash card and a CF>IDE adaptor would be a solution to that. Just cant have a swapfile constantly writing to the card, might shorten the life span to a little shorter than you want. Of course if you use a Microdrive, the impacts might not hurt it like a laptop HDD. You could still have a swapfile on the microdrive also.

Re: Wireless Serial Link - Legal Yes/No?
 

No anything that uses 900MHz is banned, if i remember right. Thats what the radio modems use.........and they don't won't anything to interfere with them. Most 2 Way radio's operate in the 900 MHz range, and thats why they don't want them there. However i have seen some 800 MHz and even 1.2 GHz radio's. Now as far as putting things on your robot that transmit any other data wirelessly i think that it has to be approved.