[techhelpbb]

I'm trying to make this my last post in this topic...

This is a summary of the advice I've given my team:

Wireless networks like this are assumed to occasionally be unreliable and in order to handle the added complexity they implement solutions that may or may not be sufficient to make them as reliable as possible.

It is wonderful what the specifications for these networks would lead you to believe as a selling point for that technology. It is wonderful what demonstrations you can make to test those specifications in one circumstance or another.

However, at the core this technology creates a link subject to some unreliability even when you don't have someone trying to make it unreliable intentionally.

It's wonderful that FIRST is trying to make these links as reliable as possible but we as the robot builders can help by making our robots less dependent on the wireless network being entirely reliable for every instant we use it.

If the parts of the robot we as the robot builders control are less dependent on the reliability of the wireless network it will be much harder for an unforeseen situation over a short period of time to decrease our competitive performance. Regardless of whether that short interruption is from someone trying to cause trouble or an unforeseen circumstance.

Our team is student-led. I'll let them decide how to deal with that. I'm confident there are many things they can do with that advice to improve the competition performance of a robot.

This advice leaves FIRST additional room to have undetected problems in their network for short periods of time for a large number of possible reasons. So this is intended to be constructive and positive leaning guidance. I think it's fair to point it out because I don't expect that it's entirely level headed to charge FIRST with doing something quite hard with a great number of variables and expect there to be no issues along the way.