Home use FMS

[cpapplefamily]

At our regional we had a bunch of trouble with our software particularly our autonomous SendableChooser. It worked every time in the pits tethered but not on the field. Turns out after disabling the windows 7 fire wall it started to work. We want to try and replicate the problem at home and try some test code to detect and alow use to respond before the match starts. Where/how can a team get the the FMS software for at home use. I been digging around but haven't found the solution.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by cpapplefamily

It worked every time in the pits tethered but not on the field. Turns out after disabling the windows 7 fire wall it started to work.

I suspect that you were running afoul of the "advanced" firewall configuration options. The firewall can be individually configured to be enabled or disabled for different categories of network. Your computer had probably ended up set to think that the field network was a "public" one, and the directly-tethered network was a "work" one, or something like that, so it didn't actually activate the firewall unless you were connected through the field network.

Shutting off the firewall completely is a several-step process. If you don't know that, it's easy to think you have turned it off but have it still lurking around ready to come back when you connect to a different network.

[cpapplefamily]

These are the entries that seem possibly relevant.

There is one entry for "AllowDriverstationOUT" with both Home and public checked
There are 55 (yes 55) entries for "AllowDriverstationIn" with both Home and public checked.

Why so many?


There are 2 entries for "FRC Driver Station" One has Home checked the other has public
There are 2 entries for "FRC Dashboard" One has Home checked the other has public
There is 7 entries for Java(TM) Platform SE binary randomly one checked for each.

[Bryan Herbst]

You can get the offseason FMS here.

Be sure to read the user's guide- you will definitely want to read it to get as close as possible to the same network configuration as the field.

That being said, you won't be able to easily replicate the exact conditions of the field. The full FMS does a lot of fancy work to set up subnets for each team, closes off many ports, and a few other things.

Some scenarios (such as your laptop thinking the network is a "public" network as Alan mentioned) are also hard to trigger at home because they are very dependent on the network itself (though in that case disabling the firewall globally will fix it for all networks).

[plnyyanks]

Another good resource is the FMS Whitepaper, which explains how the networking is set up.

The gist of it:
- Each team is on its own VLAN, so one team's robot/DS can't communicate with anything except FMS.
- Additionally, FMS only allows the ports specified in the manual though (so if you really care to mimic it, you can setup your own firewall and only whitelist the given ports). Otherwise, just ensure to disable the firewall on your DS entirely, so it doesn't block things it shouldn't, like mentioned above.
- The field AP robot radio enforces a 7 megabit/second bandwidth cap. You can enable this while the radio is programmed for home use, as well

Aside from that, there's no substantial difference between the field network and a home network. After all, it's all "just a network", even on the field.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

...
- The field AP enforces a 7 megabit/second bandwidth cap. You can enable this on your robot radio to match the field.

Aside from that, there's no substantial difference between the field network and a home network. After all, it's all "just a network", even on the field.

One minor note. IIRC, With the Open Mesh radio, the bandwidth limiting is performed on the radio, not the FMS.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by billbo911

One minor note. IIRC, With the Open Mesh radio, the bandwidth limiting is performed on the radio, not the FMS.

Yeah, you're right, I'll edit my post. Thanks for the correction!