2012 Team Update 4

[apalrd]

I too am a skeptic on how the whole bridge swap will work.

-How will teams mount it in a few minutes? We usually velcro our radio to our robot, then zip tie around it so it has no way of falling off. We also zip tie all of the wires to the radio in such a way that they can't come out, and add duct tape to the wire connections since some of them are friction fit (which is really really bad, in our experience).

-The backup radio is significantly larger (~3" in one dimension) than the old one. I expect that it simply won't fit on some robots designed for the existing radio.

-Since the backup radio runs on 12v instead of 5v, they are giving us a 4.5' power cable to plug into our PD board? The update seems to indicate that the power cable goes with a bridge (and that each team will get a power cable in the queue line). I don't see how they expect teams to integrate it into their wire harness (zip tie it in) if the radio is decently far away from the PD board, in a few minutes. I don't see how they expect teams to assume reliable radio power (which is very critical) if they can't secure the wire from damage.

-All of this is done before every match (as many as 12 quals + up to 9 elim matches)?