WiFi in pits
 

Has there been an official ruling whether WiFi will be allowed in the pits?

Re: WiFi in pits
 

I would assume if it is anything like last year you will need to teather the robot for any testing/running of the robot in the pits....

I will find the rule and site it give me a min...


[EDIT] Found it:
Every team should know, understand, and follow
the safety rules.
• Do not run in the venue.
• Wear closed-toed shoes to protect feet and toes.
• Charge batteries in an open, well-ventilated area. Do not charge near an open flame or
near equipment that may produce sparks. Do not use smoking materials in the battery
charging area. Charge in an upright position. It is not safe to charge the SLA battery in
an inverted position. Should your battery leak, ask the Pit Administration Supervisor for
baking soda to absorb the acid.
• Open flames are not allowed in any of the buildings
• Only the drayage company may handle loading robots in and out.
• Robots may be operated via wireless control only on the competition or practice fields.
• Two-way radios are not allowed.
[/EDIT]


hope that helps

Re: WiFi in pits
 

It is in update 12, but I believe he is talking about a wireless network.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Yes, I'm taking about for purposes other than robot control.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Update 12 amends the rules to prohibit wireless control on practice fields.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Wireless computer network adpaters are radios, and therefore I would think they are forbidden.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

They don't exactly specify if it is meant to be just robot communication. Otherwise things like cell phones would be dis-allowed under this rule...

I think it would not be beneficial to disallow wifi for scouting, pit cast etc...

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Depends on how tough they are on the "no radios" rule. If they enforce it thoroughly, there would be no cell phones allowed either.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

I believe that cell phones have been technically banned for a while, but almost never enforced(it's hard to do with all the spectators). Anyway...

Is using wifi illegal? Probably, since in previous years radio devices have not been allowed, and those don't even work on the same protocol as the IFI radio modems.

Will using wifi hurt anything? Probably not. Wifi as a standard was built to coexist peacefully with other wifi networks, cordless phones, ,bluetooth systems,microwave ovens, and anything else that uses that part of the 2.4 and 5 ghz bands(and be default wifi systems will find frequencies not already in use). That's not to say some performance degradation won't occur--but from our experiences testing at a school with high levels of wireless traffic, the biggest source of performance degradation is e-noise and shielding problems from your own robot, and everything else is pretty minor.

Will you get caught using wifi in the pits? It depends. If you're hooked up to a robot, you're basically announcing your ID through your SSID and the destination of packets, o you'll be easy to track down. If you're more covert about it(i.e.using a seperate wireless system), the only way to track you will be to home in on the signal, and even this can be defeated, for example, by hopping SSIDs or having a mobile AP.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

The bizarre thing about this rule to me is that a number of these venues may have one or more wireless networks in place anyway. I know for a fact that the 10,000 Lakes Regional will have the U of M Wireless network accessible as I was using it from the video drop table last year in Williams Arena.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

No wifi allowed.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Only 1024 Bytes are getting transmitted back and forth by the cRIO and Driver Station, I don't think degration will be any problem with Wireless N.

Last year we got WiFi in the area provided by the arena or some other higher-up being, I hope we will again this year, we used it to help keep our sponsors up-to-date!

~DtD

Re: WiFi in pits
 

In any case, regular Wi-fi works on the 2.4 GHz radio band, while the robot's radios work on the 5 GHz band. Therefore, there should be no problems. (Cell phones work on the 850 / 1900 MHz band so there shouldn't be problems with that either.)

Of course, this is from a practical point of view; I'm not sure about the rules here.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

My take on the intent of the rule prohibiting "wireless" communication is to prevent the Commander from talking to the Outpost Payload Specialist via walkie talkie headset or to prevent communication between the Commander and a scout in the audience. I don't think it's for technical reasons (interference prevention). That's an FCC concern. My take, not official. It would be nice if there were clarification on Q&A.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Has someone submitted something similar to this on Q&A? This is very important for a stand scouting system my team is working on.

Would it be against the rules to _use_ the 10k Lakes Wi-Fi network for communication?

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Our team is doing something along these lines for scouting, and we been granted permission from the regional we are attending to set up a special wireless network for our project. You should try contacting your regional to see if they can accomodate you.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

A regional couldn't override the official FIRST rules. There are a gazzilion reasons to allow all the teams to have a wireless network for whatever reasons (scouting, source code management, like from SVN or DARCS, making certain that your girlfriend isn't talking to a nerd from another team - YOU are the only nerd she should talk to, etc.).

There may be concerns that having 100 wireless networks may interfere with the competition. Since the robots were conrolled by RF last year, that may have been the source of the no radio rule. Certainly they knew that cell phones couldn't interfere (I don't know what frequency they were using, but it would have been a violation of law by FIRST to use anything in the cell phone bands).

Not allowing control of the robots by wireless at the competition other than on the field makes lots of sense. It would be easy to interfere with each other and thus lose control of the robots.

Spot WiFi was availble at the Peachtree last year, provided by the venue. Having one or a hundred WiFi networks won't interfere with the competition, assuming that the WiFis don't transmit on the competition frequency and they are managed properly. I can see FIRST prohibiting privat WiFis just for this reason - how can they tell that some team hasn't misconfigured their network? (Well, they could, but that would take extra effort.)

This is all useless speculation. Someone needs to post a well formulated question on the usfirst forum. And we will all need alternatives to having a private WiFi network just in case.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Team Update 13:
FIRST, of course, does have the authority to determine this sort of stuff, but they doesn't micro-manage individual events, and I get the impression the regional committee could rule on it individually, it is just a matter of if FIRST takes corrective action afterward or during if they find out it violated their rule.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

At the DC Regional, the convention center provides the WiFi, which is about $25 a day...

Re: WiFi in pits
 

...And we get royalty on every one of them. :D

(had to)

-q

Re: WiFi in pits
 

NO WIFI IN THE PITS
URE WIRELESS INTERNET ON A LAP TOP MUST BE OFF
OR U MAY TEMP LOSE URE LAPTOP

Re: WiFi in pits
 

says who?

also, that would be illegal, since it's a public event, they cannot confiscate personal computing devices.

also, as it's been said before, WIFI is built to coexist. I've run a test with 400 (yes 400) wifi broadcast points (routers and laptops broadcasting ad-hoc) and there was very little interference... it's called an epic lan-party

also, as it's been said before, cell phones would have to be banned, and did i mention that many PDA-Phones have wifi? so, it seems like it would be hard, if not impossible to stop people from using laptops.

also, by the way,
please, type full words.

L33tsp34k just gets annoying when you are trying to read through a forum.

thanks

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Also, please refrain from use of the caps lock key.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Although WiFi is made to play together, with a new field management system why take the chance that there could be frequency interference of some kind or any kind of digital interference like packet collisions - sure the FMS is using closed computer to computer setup but why take the chance with a new setup? From a debugging standpoint if no one else is using WiFi then any problems encountered - and there have been a few - and you can immediately eliminate any interference due to improper setup or jamming or other random effects. The bug to chase is localized in the FMS somewhere...

Re: WiFi in pits
 

When we compete at the Minnesota venue (William's Arena) there was the University network (and that's what I used). There should be zero problems and I won't judge with the rules but I guess the easiest thing to do is to ask a regional manager there.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

Even if no one is using wifi this would be a very dangerous assumption to make--for one, 802.11n isn't the only thing that uses the 5ghz band. There could also conviveably be electrical noise issues from the robots that affect a lot of frequencies. And finally, if you immediate decide that the problem couldn't be the wifi link because no one's using wifi, you ignore the possibility that either.
1.Someone didn't get the memo--after all, some of these events have thousands of spectators, and not all of them are neccesarily going to know the rules
2.Someone is deliberatley trying to bring down the system by use of a jammer or some wifi-specific attack

Re: WiFi in pits
 

In any case, there's not much that can be done about it, nor do they really do anything. At Buckeye, I turned on Airport (yes, I was using a mac) every so often to see if there were any networks that weren't supposed to exist. In what is probably an a/b/g (maybe not even a) card, I saw 2 networks which existed the whole day and at least 5 others that popped in and out throughout the day, a few of which were named '___ (team number removed) laptop connect.' Nothing was done about it.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

• Robots may be operated via wireless control only on the competition or practice fields.
• Two-way radios or other form of wireless communications are not allowed (with the
exception of the previous bullet).

Wireless communications, and that includes wifi routers for scoring, laptop to laptop networks, etc. with the exception of cellphones is NOT ALLOWED.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

There were a few dozen people spotted with their lap-tops open and in use in that stands at MWR. I'm not saying they were using wifi but they were on their computers. So how is [i]FIRST[i] going to enforce a no wifi rule?
You can't go around picking up everyones lap-top especially if the person is not a FIRST member. And what about the Blackberries and PDA's?

Have their been any problems yet with a person using wifi interfering with the game field or robots?

-p :cool:

Re: WiFi in pits
 

At the Buckeye regional we spoke with team 829 about thier scouting program, which was pretty neat by the way. If I remember correctly they said they teamed up with Purdue FIRST and had someting like 12 people watching matches. These people were somehow tied together and then a final program was compiled for use. It seemed to work for them, maybe someone more familiar with it can explain here?

Re: WiFi in pits
 

From my understanding all the Purdue FIRST scouting was done on laptops that were wired together.

As for the wireless rules, I think FIRST is fully aware of the technical issues with using 5Ghz spectrum and the potential for interference from non Wifi devices. I don't think you will see FIRST come down hard and enforce the rule unless someone is caught intentionally interfering with the field system. That does not mean you shouldn't respect the rules set forth by FIRST even if you are technically sure it wouldn't interfere at all.

In the past the FTA would stop by your pit if you were caught using the radio but I didn't hear about that happening at all this week.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

When we asked them if it was wifi they said no, however they also said that it was not hardwired. I'm not saying they were doing anything illegal I was just wondering what it was they were actually using (infrared maybe?) We did not talk fo very long since it was right before elim picking so we my have not gotten the whole story, however I know that we could benefit from the type of scouting program they had as well as others.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

After the weekend of scrimmages it became very obvious that it would take many people to scout each match effectively. Many more than we could bring to Cleveland

The Purdue teams very generously allowed us to join in their scouting alliance. There were many pairs of eyes watching each match. The scout teams were in the stands networked together via wire.

I don't know the final numbers but by Friday afternoon the database was correctly predicting the outcome of 90% of the matches.

Big thanks to the Purdue teams.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

That is correct. The Purdue FIRST scouting was managed through Ethernet connections on either the 48 or 24 port switch (although supposedly there was a wireless router that I didn't notice). Each laptop on this network would have the scouting sheet (Microsoft Excel) and would FTP to one of the laptops which would import them into our database (also on Excel).

Since I didn't make it, I'm not sure if I can give you the actual file but I can probably whip something up in Access that would do a decent amount of what was on there.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

What I'm saying is that regardless of the rules, there were several wireless networks which existed at Buckeye. I think two of them were probably pre-existing networks associated with the venue, but several of them were not. There were many computer-to-computer networks which were obviously not supposed to exist (such as a team ____ laptop connect). Had FIRST simply scanned for networks, they would have found some interesting stuff. I was only using an a/b/g card to scan, but somebody else had an a/b/g/n which picked up over 100 networks at one point.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

FIRST does scan for networks continuously, and sets up their own networks accordingly. The fact that we can coexist with existing infrastructure shouldn't be a surprise.

Also note that the field creates and destroys 6 networks each match.

Lastly, note that FIRST has merely asked that we don't contribute possible interference: NOT that all possible interference must be eliminated. "They did X so I can too" is an invalid argument, because interference is additive (and severely non-linear).

We've had many industry heavy-weights weigh in on this (including one who leads one of the 802.11 task groups), and the decision has been made to be cautious.

Lets not go down the "they can't enforce it so I'm going to do it any way" path. Even if they can't enforce it, it is a really skeezy thing to do. If they can enforce it, do you really need to be the one that finds out how?

Some jerk decided to interfere with the IR transceivers last year. He attempted to screw up several matches before being "firmly asked" to leave. Don't be him.

Re: WiFi in pits
 

http://regional.purduefirst.org/?page=faq
Well, I'm not sure if this is out of date or not, but it seems that access to the exisiting infrastructure is being provided (at Boilermaker). Also, it seems to be actually more of a safety hazard to go the other route and have a port switch with cables running to every computer necessary. Trust me, when you have six ethernet cables and about 10 power cords running in an area of the stands, it is getting to the point of ridiculous.

Regardless of the creation and destruction of the networks, I'm talking about 100 existing at the same time

Question: How much interference is there really between the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands? If I remember correctly, the field is set to lock into the 5 GHz, and most wireless at this point is 2.4 (along with microwave ovens and that such).

Oh and could you address all of the other networks? The field communications only use 802.11n, but I was picking up about 7 networks on a/b/g.