Connection issues at regionals

[Greg McKaskle]

Wes, if/when this happens, did you happen to notice if the link lights on the RoboRIO were on?

This is one of the indications that the radio and roboRIO link didn't come up and one of the devices needs to be rebooted -- we generally reboot the roboRIO because it is faster. This is likely caused by power saving features on one or both devices, and we are hoping to fix this for good, but it happens quite rarely, so didn't get enough instances during beta. The general guideline is to swap to the other radio port. It appears the the one near the power does this less frequently, but there are only two, so it is a quick experiment.

FIRST does have much more control over the firmware, but things like this are rare, and there are many configuration options. Why would they fiddle with POE and power settings away from the factory settings unless they see an issue? I think there are already far fewer gremlins in the system than the end-of-life Dlink, but with a season and another beta period, we will really know how beneficial the open image is.

As for static and dynamic IPs. The majority of teams are configured for dynamic, or the CSAs and FTAs do it for them. Occasionally, a team wants to be static, which is compatible with the field DHCP, so we ensure that they stay out of the range of the dynamic server and have the recommended values. As long as you are consistent, both work fine. I prefer DHCP in almost all instances, but let the team decide after I explain why their current settings were not working.

Greg McKaskle