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Unread 19-02-2007, 00:32
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Dave K. Dave K. is offline
Engineer/Mentor
FRC #0930
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: WI
Posts: 91
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Re: does anyone have OI and RC radio issues

Quote:
Originally Posted by UlTiMaTeP View Post
I'm so pro-First and pro-IFI its crazy. But, I don't like the fact that IFI is taking the defense that it is our problems, mounting etc. It is obviously a FIRST-wide problem, and a radio design problem. Ignoring the fact that it is a faulty design won't make this go away. Some teams say their new RMA'ed radios have worked better than their first ones.

Our radios lose packets at 3 feet away sitting on top of a wooden table. This year we have a new communications engineer mentor who basicly said, if the connections are tight, and it is still losing sync at that distance, nothing is gonna fix these radios.

As I stated a week ago: IFI will solve these problems, Go First.
To a certain extent, IFI's hands are tied in terms of being able to solve this problem. If they were to modify the design, it would most likely require recertification for the FCC equipment authorization.

I'll again echo my previous statements that in all other respects, my experience with IFI has been timely, professional and reasonable. While I'm sure they can solve the problem, the bigger question is whether they'll be able to do it in both a timely and legal manner.

Based upon what I saw today at the local regional in Sussex, WI, many teams operated successfully, and there appeared to be some interference issues with teams operating on the same channel, however even when the event organizers dutifully checked to make certain everyone was on the correct channel, there were still some teams experiencing problems to the extent that it affected the outcome of the match.

In a couple of instances, I was able to see the lights on the robot's radio showing the radio going into standby and then attempting to find its operator interface again... and this is with less than 10 feet between the OI and the robot.

Instances where more than one radio pair attempted operation on the same channel is quite easy to spot as the Tx/Rx LED's on the radios will be almost constantly illuminated as opposed to the normal alternate flickering. So once you know what to look for, it is pretty easy to see the difference between interference and a radio that has just lost communications with its partner.

One of the teams at todays event simply chose to use the older radios.

While its good to hear that many, and perhaps most, teams are not experiencing an obvious problem, unfortunately our team is not one of those.

Teams experiencing problems, should make all attempts to make your FIRST contacts aware of your individual situations.

At this point, the reasonable and conservative answer would seem to be the use of the old radio's. I'm sure most of us have 18 other design implimentation issues that our time would be better spent on.
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--Dave