RoboRIO / FMS / mDNS / lessons learned

[Mr. Lim]

Very interesting subtleties. I can see those being very annoying.

During Alpha testing I was very postivie of moving to DHCP and taking away the need to set static IPs. This was especially useful for programming laptops that were switching constantly between robot networks (static) and internet connections (DHCP).

I still am a big fan of DHCP, but recognize there are instances like this where a lack of mDNS support by some peripherals (IP-based cameras, embedded computers for co-processing, etc) could be an issue.

The pros outweigh the cons for sure, however.

I'd have to agree with jhersh in saying that the best situation is to get all devices on dynamic IPs via DHCP + mDNS, then address them only by their hostnames.

Of course not everything supports mDNS.

The RPi can probably do it with some additional software:
http://www.howtogeek.com/167190/how-...-raspberry-pi/

The newer Axis Cameras (M1011 onwards) should also support Apple Bonjour, which actually should provide mDNS services.

I haven't tried either so I'm not speaking from experience, but they are both worth a shot trying to configure.

Alternatively, I think a cool potential solution would be to have the RoboRIO detect whether a DHCP server is present on the network, and if not, act as a DHCP+DNS server. It would then need to shut down and hand off the leases to the FMS's DHCP server when connected to the field, which would probably be the hard part. Multiple DHCP servers on the same network aren't ideal.