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Unread 04-29-2012, 11:46 PM
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MAldridge MAldridge is offline
Lead Programmer
AKA: Rube #1
FRC #0418 (LASA Robotics)
Team Role: Programmer
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Rookie Year: 2010
Location: Austin
Posts: 117
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Re: The communication tides are shifting...

I consider it to be full of holes because it was not written for a single application. If you think about it for a while, you always come back to the idea that however talented some people are, the software guys on FRC teams are high school students, and the odds that thier code will not screw something up on the dashboard, and that they will configure it properly, are pretty low. We played around with several of the 'commercially available' solutions, such as smart dashboard and zomb, but couldn't get either one to run reliably the whole time. We coded our own and that worked the best.

As for the wireless with the omni antenna, that would be great if it could be acquired cheaply. You are correct about frequency overlap, but I think you have the country wrong (my ARRL handbook is not handy, or I would check). I think though that the problem that you would encounter with an antenna is that then you would have to explain to teams proper cable routing and making sure the feedline was built right. Good luck with that one.

A good radio is a part of the solution, the question is what makes a good radio.
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