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Unread 17-03-2012, 21:03
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Alan Anderson Alan Anderson is offline
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FRC #0045 (TechnoKats)
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Re: Intermittent connection on field only

One team at Boilermaker today had the same symptoms described here: inconsistent loss of wireless communication during a match. There didn't seem to be any pattern other than noting that it never happened on the practice field. When I was called in to help troubleshoot, I discovered the 12v-to-5v converter essentially stuck to the bottom of the D-Link. After I suggested that they move it to a less potentially interfering location, they had a string of successful matches all the way through the elimination rounds.

I remember the same problem with the same fix with another team last year.

I'm going to engage in some speculation here. The 12v radio power from the PDB comes from a boosted supply. The supply should have filtering on the output, but if something is faulty it's going to have some ripple in it from the switching. That could be causing electrical noise and RFI from the 5v converter. It might be that an insufficiently clean 5v input makes the D-Link act a bit flaky. Without taking a few hours with an oscilloscope and a collection of parts to do a careful analysis, I think that's the best theory I'm going to come up with.