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Originally Posted by compwiztobe
I see no mention of a system that is quick to boot and establish communications. For whatever the reasons may be (there a few threads discussing it), the current 802.11 scheme takes a while and has plenty of issues besides. So if that means scrapping 802.11 for a proprietary radio link IFI-style or modifying the wifi setup to streamline things, whatever. The general requirement is quick boots and quick and rock solid connections.
Also it'd be nice if the controller booted faster...
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I'm not sure, but I think there was a point in there about boot up time
I agree, Wi-Fi has too much overhead in general for this setup, including the time for the router and everything to start up, connect together... etc. I'd really actually like to see an 802.15.4 based system, but I'm not sure it has the bandwidth for the full video streaming everyone is spoiled by now (In my day we didn't have streaming video, we drove our robots with our eyes!
) but something could almost certainly be worked out. Maybe there are Wi-Fi based solutions that are simply faster and more streamlined?
I do think the system shouldn't take so long to start up, but I'm spoiled by the IFI system that just started running, so perhaps the boot up time isn't as long as it feels to me.
I've transplanted my comments from the other thread here as well:
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Originally Posted by techhelpbb
2. The ability to separate the power for the control logic from the power for the motors (at least for troubleshooting).
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The old control system had a back up battery (7.2V) that was added specifically to prevent motors from browning out the controller and radio. The boost converter on the PD board we have now does a pretty good job of protecting the controller from blackouts.
If you meant just to have them connected to separate power so you can turn off one without the other, then just use a separate battery and PD board to run the controls and tie the negatives together.
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Originally Posted by techhelpbb
4. The ability to check the quality of the link from the field control (that's a ghost that's caused enough headaches).
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You can do this by monitoring the wi-fi signal strength and ping latency, but those aren't great indicators, but if we're going to be stuck so many layers away from the actual radio hardware, we don't have any accurate link integrity data.
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Originally Posted by techhelpbb
6A. Circuit protection that is consistent. So a 40A breaker that actually trips at 40A and does so over and over...not once at 40A, once at 30A, once at 20A and then maybe will be like that for a while.
or
6B. A latching current monitoring system that can tell you if you trip the breaker from over current.
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The 2005 breaker board had a serial port on it that would tell the controller about breakers that popped, it was pretty useful. I've heard rumors the current PD board was
supposed to have that, but it didn't make the cut. I suspect the people making the decision underestimated just how useful that data is.
Matt