CRIO-FRCIII

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by yash101

Thanks.
I wonder if it would be legal to have an onboard cheap ethernet switch. Next year, I want to have a node based processing system with multiple computers, running a specific portion of the code. One ethernet port will probably not be enough . I guess the dongle will be hard to hit my a gamepiece but I'm still kinda skeptical because the ASUS router sitting in front of me has quite a poor build quality and crashes every 15 mins. Is the antenna a single plane or multiple axes? A plane antenna would mean the robot would lose communications when it turns a bit.
I am also wondering about the build quality of the roborio. The GPIO seems to be build into the main package. Have you ever had any problems with debris getting in the case and making it behave very wierd? That was one thing that happened quite often with the Digital Sidecar!
I am just wondering but how accurate are the current sensors in the PDB? Do you ever use them as an effective debug strategy for eradicating nasty shorts?
Thanks.
I think I just spammed you with questions

Obviously, we don't have a copy of next year's rules available yet, but going on this year's and past year's rules, I don't see anything wrong with having an ethernet switch - it's just a "custom circuit" on the robot.

We've been running the robot quite a bit, including some hard hits (we used it as an opponent robot for driver practice this year), and we haven't had any drop outs. I don't know how the antenna in it is configured.

You're guess is as good as mine when it comes to the RoboRio case and debris - we don't have a case on our test board! They sent us the bare circuit board with some standoffs, and that's what we've been using so far. No problems with it, but then again we haven't been doing any actual work on that robot since we put the board on - no drilling or cutting of anything, and the pan it was mounted to was brand new.

We haven't tested the current sensors on the PDB yet - That wasn't available in the library before kickoff, and I'm not sure if it's available yet (it's been a while since we've had time to look at any updates). Once the season is done with, we'll reconvene our Alpha Test group inside the team and see what new stuff we can play with in the code