[Deetman]

Originally Posted by ErikEdhlund

There are a few problems here,wouldn't make sense that the entire stadium be electrically grounded in case of lightning striking the dome itself? Another concern would be based on the information provided why wouldn't wifi in schools or homes lose connection during bad storms? There is also the problem that the only way the noise would affect the robot connection would be if we all connected to that router since 3G and the competition signal run on different wavelengths.

Agreed... If that entire stadium isn't grounded properly I wouldn't want to be in it during an electrical storm. With the proper grounding that building makes a Faraday cage for everything inside it limiting (or eliminating) any electromagnetic waves from going in or out. This is the same reason that generally your cell phone loses signal quality inside large buildings like the stadium.

Satellite TV (well any satellite communications really) have issues with electrical storms because there is no way for that signal to avoid the interference the storm provides.

Regarding cell phones and other connected devices, generally they are running on different frequencies than the 5GHz (I'm assuming they were not using 2.4GHz) WiFi we use in FRC. While harmonics can be nasty and have an effect, generally they won't be strong enough to be an issue; they come more in to play in things like Space to ground transmissions (see LightSquared interfering with GPS despite being in a different frequency band).

There is no doubt in my mind that any issues were not caused by general electromagnetic interference with the WiFi system. I'm not discounting multiple WiFi networks being present confusing the routers on board our robots, but that is not directly related.