Using Dual Band N USB Adapters for FRC
 

As many of you have found, FIRST’s change this year to get rid of the router and control the robot in testing environments through the laptop’s built in WiFi is a double edged sword. If your laptop includes dual band N capability it’s a godsend. If it’s in a electrically quiet lab it may work fine as well. It means you don’t have to haul around that silly router. Alas the Classmate that FIRST provides doesn’t do N at all, let alone dual band N. That means your robot is being controlled over the same frequencies as plain old WiFi 802.11G and a million other unlicensed devices like cordless phones, Bluetooth, etc. The results can be disappointing in any environment where there are a lot of signals around. Robots that start and stop and drive erratically are bad news!

For our outreach events and scrimmages, we'd like to find a cheap solution so that teams can just show up with a control system that works in the 5GHz band with no fuss. If they don't have a laptop with dual band N, one possible solution is a dual band USB ntework adapter. Many companies make these but the Linksys version is here. They are $40 new or $20 refurbished.

Has anyone tried this kind of network adapter with a Classmate controlling a robot?