Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
I'll let the FTA and other field crew get into as many specifics as they feel are necessary, but rest assured, the field crew was doing absolutely everything they could to get the event running as quickly as possible. There were issues with communications and FMS that slowed the event down dramatically (especially interesting considering the same field had almost no issues with it the previous two weeks in DC and Baltimore).
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Our FMS/communication problems were problems with robots linking with FMS because of differences in wireless radios. The problem arose when any robot using the original (square and black) Linksys gaming adapter linked with FMS before a robot using the newer, silver adapter. This caused a problem in FMS and the remaining radios would not link, causing FMS to have to be restarted.
We eventually worked out a process to solve this link problem: We first ensured all driver stations were linked, then allowed robots with new radios to power up and link, then booted all remaining robots with old radios. After we figured it out, this longer and time consuming process worked most of the time, but we still had to restart the FMS router periodically.
We began keeping track of teams using the newer radios, and used this process in each match they competed in. We ended with 7/63 teams using new radios (about 11%). Those 7 teams cycled through about every 10 matches. Time between matches without new radios ran about 6.5 minutes, matches with new radios of course ran longer.