Our team recently participated in a parade through an area that can best be described as very noisy from a 2.4GHz 802.11 basis. It’s a mix of commercial & residential, and there are many, many WiFi APs in the area. Over the course of ~1.25 miles and ~45 minutes, we probably passed within range of 50-75 different APs.
The intent was to have our 2013 FRC robot follow behind a pickup truck, with the drivers in the back of the truck driving the robot, shooting Frisbees, etc. What we experienced was what can best be described as a complete breakdown in controllability of the robot. The robot had to be kept w/in ~20 ft of the driver station to have any control at all, and even then it was not reliable. When we did have control, there was often considerable lag (2-3 sec) between control inputs and robot response. It almost seemed like the robot had a mind of its own, taking off in seeming random directions even when the drivers weren’t giving it any inputs. We ended up disabling it and physically pushing it through the streets – not very impressive from a recruiting standpoint. As soon as we got out of the densely populated area, everything returned to normal.
Without getting into all of the details of our exact configuration, examining the DS logs, etc., can anyone give any suggestions as to configuration/settings that should be used (or avoided) in a situation such as this? Specifically:
- 2.4GHz vs. 5.8GHz
- 802.11 b vs. g vs. n
- DAP-1522 rev A vs. rev B
- Setting the DAP-1522 to auto-select the channel
- AP and/or laptop power levels
- Classmate (circa 2011) vs. higher-end laptop
- DS WiFi card settings (roaming aggressiveness, CTS, WMM, preamble, etc.)