What's a good Access Point for FMS Lite?

[R.C.]

Terry we had the same issue at MTTD, we had a really nice router hooked up but teams would drop in and out. Luckily 971 had a spare WRT610N Router with them. Their router worked for the rest of practice matches, also worked for all of saturday (quals/elims).

They are still available here.

I can't recommend another router as many have failed for us. Maybe Greg from NI can?

-RC

[dcarr]

Terry, I know we've lent our WRT610N at Harvey Mudd in the past but obviously counting on teams to bring one isn't an ideal solution...although I do think we'll be at Harvey Mudd and the Fall Classic for the foreseeable future.

This also ends my wondering about the hiccups early on at the Fall Classic, while things seemed to run smoothly for the rest of the day. Thanks for donating so much of your time to make these events a success!

RC, if off-season events switch to full FMS in the future, will that negate this issue?

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by dcarr

RC, if off-season events switch to full FMS in the future, will that negate this issue?

This shouldn't be a problem in the future for California. The full FMS has its own router.

-RC

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by dcarr

Terry, I know we've lent our WRT610N at Harvey Mudd in the past but obviously counting on teams to bring one isn't an ideal solution...although I do think we'll be at Harvey Mudd and the Fall Classic for the foreseeable future.

This also ends my wondering about the hiccups early on at the Fall Classic, while things seemed to run smoothly for the rest of the day. Thanks for donating so much of your time to make these events a success!

RC, if off-season events switch to full FMS in the future, will that negate this issue?

Yes the router was a major part of the problems early on. It made the normal first-round issues much worse. After we switched routers and got everybody linked up things went much better. I can't recall the last time I saw Terry spend as much time sitting around as he did in the afternoon at the Fall Classic. This is a good thing. It means the robots were behaving themselves and hooking up nicely, without our help.

If we were to use the full FMS it would mitigate this issue, but CA is a big state and the normal place for West Coast FMS is about 400 miles away, and there is only one. So we still need a router for the pre-ship scrimmage. The Full FMS this past year also took a LOT of work to wire. We had already decided not to use it when we found out it was going to be unavailable because it was too much set-up time for a 1 day event.

[timytamy]

We used a E3000 for our off-season, being the direct replacement for the WRT610N it worked without a problem.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by timytamy

We used a E3000 for our off-season, being the direct replacement for the WRT610N it worked without a problem.

Same, we have 2x Linksys E3000 and they work quite well including outdoors where we practice.

[Jon Jack]

At Battle at the Border this year we used a Cisco AP541N-A-K9 Dual-Band Single Radio Wireless Access Point and had no field related connections issues at all. I know the cost is a little high, but this was hands down the best investment we've ever made for Battle at the Border.

[terbos]

Originally Posted by dcarr

Same, we have 2x Linksys E3000 and they work quite well including outdoors where we practice.

Thanks for the suggestions. I managed to find an E3000 refurb at NewEgg for a good price and ordered it. I think I should be in good shape.

The funny thing was I tried ordering it from Cisco first. They didn't have any new ones, but claimed to have refurbs in stock. 2 clicks into ordering one, they changed their mind and said they were all out. Bummer for them.

Thanks again,
Terry

[JesseK]

I don't know if IROC had an E3000 or a WRT610N. It rebooted itself twice in the middle of matches towards the end of the day. Hard to tell if it was due to robot packet dumps since it occurred two different sets of robots were on the field. Some teams did have difficulty connecting (like 1885), but eventually all did connect. Overall it was a smooth day.