Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by LedLover96

I don't know if its possible or not, but after living in ST. Louis my whole life, I have seen this stuff happen during bad weather. Sometimes during bad weather I will lose wireless, without a power surge or outage. I wouldn't put it past the Midwest...

The worst of the storm (hail and thunderstorms) came during the finals matches, which had the least communications problems. It's certainly possible, of course, but I don't see much of a link there.

Anyway, I think this question has to be asked: Why is the Einstein field one that has (generally) not been used at all during the season? Yes, I'm sure it's tested just as much as the other fields if not more, and I understand the appeal of playing the final matches on a pristine, unused field, but I think the benefits of using a tried and tested field outweigh those. If in a future year there are again a lot of communication problems, they could even make it part of the protocol to play the finals on the field that had the fewest such issues during its own matches.

[Doc Wu]

Originally Posted by efoote868

If only we could go back to IFI's radio system... wifi problems solved.

Yeah. Try and push a video signal over that!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Wheeee. Well I feel a need to post a small rejoinder to plnyyanks' post above. My only quibble with his post is the suggestion that this isn't anyone's fault. This is unequivocally, without a doubt, FIRST's fault.

Understand, I'm not saying that the root cause lies with the field or something. I think it's pretty clear the the root cause of these failures must be associated with particular robots in some fashion. Galileo didn't really have any problems after switching to the Red station, after all. So it's unlikely that the issue is with a particular station color or number.

Nevertheless, it is FIRST's fault even if every single comms issue can be traced back to some specific problem with a robot. This is for the simple reason that we're playing with a FIRST mandated control system on a FIRST field, following FIRST's instructions for setting up and running on the field. All the equipment and software we use is supplied through FIRST. If they don't know this stuff well enough to troubleshoot these problems and help teams fix issues, it is entirely their fault for not doing due diligence and understanding their system. Yes, yes, a team or robot might be the cause of a particular case of comms issues, but it's inexcusable if FIRST can't tell that team how to fix the problem.

(shakes cane) Back in the day of IFI controllers, we didn't have these kinds of problems. When there were comms or controls issues, the IFI people worked the problem and solved it. The back in '07, IFI moved to new radios and teams had comms issues with them. IFI identified the problems and had FIRST post a list of fixes and solutions in a Team Update. Before the Week 1 regionals. Clearly, we have been in this situation before, only back then things got fixed because there were people available that knew the entire control system from code to chips.

The situation now is obviously different. I'm certain FIRST has experts available that know the NI hardware and software, PDB, etc. just as well as IFI knew things. I'm just as certain they don't have anyone that knows anything about our communication equipment since we're using off the shelf consumer components for that vital part of the robot. Heck, it took a FIRST team member/mentor writing a program to automate WPA programming back in '10. FIRST clearly has been treating our wifi equipment as a magic black box that should just work. It's entirely their fault for doing so, and we're seeing the results of it now.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by ErikEdhlund

Another concern would be based on the information provided why wouldn't wifi in schools or homes lose connection during bad storms?

This:

Originally Posted by LedLover96

I don't know if its possible or not, but after living in ST. Louis my whole life, I have seen this stuff happen during bad weather. Sometimes during bad weather I will lose wireless, without a power surge or outage. I wouldn't put it past the Midwest...

Originally Posted by ErikEdhlund

There are a few problems here,wouldn't make sense that the entire stadium be electrically grounded in case of lightning striking the dome itself?

I'm not saying that an electrical current (like, electrons flowing) passes from the sky, through the dome, and into the field network. Like you said, I'd assume the dome is grounded, preventing this from happening. I am saying that the culprit might be electromagnetic radiation, not current. Electromagnetic radiation exhibits exhibits wave-like behavior as it travels through space. This would allow it to travel through the (grounded) dome and interfere with the network. The wave emitted by the storm would interact with the wave emitted by the router, get into conflict, and mess things up for the teams.

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by ErikEdhlund

There are a few problems here,wouldn't make sense that the entire stadium be electrically grounded in case of lightning striking the dome itself? Another concern would be based on the information provided why wouldn't wifi in schools or homes lose connection during bad storms? There is also the problem that the only way the noise would affect the robot connection would be if we all connected to that router since 3G and the competition signal run on different wavelengths.

Agreed... If that entire stadium isn't grounded properly I wouldn't want to be in it during an electrical storm. With the proper grounding that building makes a Faraday cage for everything inside it limiting (or eliminating) any electromagnetic waves from going in or out. This is the same reason that generally your cell phone loses signal quality inside large buildings like the stadium.

Satellite TV (well any satellite communications really) have issues with electrical storms because there is no way for that signal to avoid the interference the storm provides.

Regarding cell phones and other connected devices, generally they are running on different frequencies than the 5GHz (I'm assuming they were not using 2.4GHz) WiFi we use in FRC. While harmonics can be nasty and have an effect, generally they won't be strong enough to be an issue; they come more in to play in things like Space to ground transmissions (see LightSquared interfering with GPS despite being in a different frequency band).

There is no doubt in my mind that any issues were not caused by general electromagnetic interference with the WiFi system. I'm not discounting multiple WiFi networks being present confusing the routers on board our robots, but that is not directly related.

[Anupam Goli]

Even if it wasn't interference, what happened to Code Bonde? Why couldn't they switch out to a Code Bonde setup and tried that?

[arizonafoxx]

Here are my two cents for what it is worth.

We had around an hour after every field was finished before the Einstein field started. When the finals started on Einstein we had to listen to around 50 minutes of speeches and awards before we got to the first match. Was this really the best use of time in hind sight? Why can't each robot have a practice connection during that down time. NASCAR has practice time on the track, Soccer has warm ups on the field, Football has warm ups on the field before the super bowl. With the amount of time that this field sat in a warehouse how many hours of time were robots connected to the field. Every other field at the event had a previous regional where it was used and the equipment was tested. Second why can't one match be completed before the first awards and Deans speech are presented. If there was a comms problem there would have been around 50 minutes to troubleshoot the problem while Dean and others were speaking. Don't get me wrong I like listening to the speeches to a certain extent but I also think everyone is excited and want to at least see one or two matches right away before the speeches start. Had everyone seen there was a potential problem with this field before there is an issue where they are behind schedule due to Dean's speech or something else they could have realized they needed to cut the speeches shorter to rerun a match or something.

Just my two cents.

I think there will be a valid solution to this by next year that is stated in the manual. At the very least the the teams should have switched sides so that each team had to deal with the same field issues.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Wing

Even if it wasn't interference, what happened to Code Bonde? Why couldn't they switch out to a Code Bonde setup and tried that?

Wow. I totally forgot about Code Bonde until now. Why DIDN'T they do that? I assume there must have been a reason...has it been used at all this season?

[Anupam Goli]

I heard something about it being implementable at the regional level and not beyond that, but I'm not sure myself. Code Bonde was put in place for situations like this where wireless interference could be a problem.

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Wing

I heard something about it being implementable at the regional level and not beyond that, but I'm not sure myself. Code Bonde was put in place for situations like this where wireless interference could be a problem.

If wireless interference truly was the root cause, I'm sure they would have put it into effect. All of these events have a Spectrum Analyzer at them monitoring the levels at various frequencies. I'd imagine that everything on that front was well within tolerances.

Not to mention that it hasn't been used all season. Who's to say the problem wouldn't be made WORSE or you introduce other problems in the process of switching?

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Deetman

If wireless interference truly was the root cause, I'm sure they would have put it into effect. All of these events have a Spectrum Analyzer at them monitoring the levels at various frequencies. I'd imagine that everything on that front was well within tolerances.

If that's the case, then my point about the weather may be moot. This is news to me.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Bonde was used once this season at FLR. Looking through the FLR thread, there wasn't much mentioned as to why. There also wasn't any comment on comms problems or anything, so go figure.

If it's implementable on a regional level, you should be able to run it on Einstein. They're clearly not running anything different on FMS at Einstein, judging by the fake Qual matches on the Match Results page. I suspect no one thought there would be a problem, and there wasn't time between matches to switch out the setup to the Bonde setup.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Bonde was used once this season at FLR. Looking through the FLR thread, there wasn't much mentioned as to why. There also wasn't any comment on comms problems or anything, so go figure.
.

I would think it could be due to the issues at FLR last year, which I believe are why Code Bonde was created.

Here's something else to note, in regards to the field being a fresh, never used field. Prior to the matches, the red alliance stations had the numbers, "16, 2194, 330". I don't know what the blue station had because of where I was sitting, but this struck me as something very strange.

[arizonafoxx]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Bonde was used once this season at FLR. Looking through the FLR thread, there wasn't much mentioned as to why. There also wasn't any comment on comms problems or anything, so go figure.

If it's implementable on a regional level, you should be able to run it on Einstein. They're clearly not running anything different on FMS at Einstein, judging by the fake Qual matches on the Match Results page. I suspect no one thought there would be a problem, and there wasn't time between matches to switch out the setup to the Bonde setup.

I think there was enough time between matches to switch this out. I mean how many awards were given out between each match. It may have been a logistics issue of not having the equipment where it needed to be in order to implement it, but there was enough time. My guess is that since it had not been used much the whole season that they left it in the truck when they unloaded the equipment.

[JM987]

Originally Posted by efoote868

180, 25, and 16 played and won on the red alliance. The field issues seemed to be just with the red alliance, so I would not consider it a "tainted" win.

I cheered when they announced replaying both matches. That was the correct decision, and as far as I know, the only decision they could have made.

That's not true. We were on the blue alliance in the finals and were having major problems.