Team Fusion #364, Bayou Regional, FMS Woes

[RyanN]

By the support of the FIRST community, Gracious Professionalism of FIRST, and the gracious support of Lucien Junken from Robonauts, Team 118, Team Fusion 364 is officially going to the Lone Star Regional!

Some things to mention at this point. When we get to the competition on Thursday, we will be going out to the field early along with some other problematic teams, and test communications. We're not going to change anything with our configuration, including software or hardware. We want to isolate the problem first, then go about some troubleshooting.

At this point, we are leaning towards RF interference. Our router was set to channel 1, but I'm not sure the channel configuration of other robots.

I know channels 1, 6, and 11 are most often used because their RF frequencies do not overlap.

Even though not all teams have problems, FIRST does have a problem.

Take for example this video from the iPhone 4 unveiling a few years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znxQOPFg2mo

The audience was way smaller. The iPhone 4 could not connect at all. To fix this problem, Steve Jobs had to ask the audience to shut off all electronic devices.

FIRST needs to do the same, or use a different technology. Simply using the 5GHz band of Wireless N would help tremendously.

This doesn't answer the question of why just us, but this is a problem at the competition.

For now, FIRST should ask the audience to place their cell phones into airline mode. Students on the field need to just leave their phone in the pit with them.