[FRC Blog] Radio Silence

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by fargus111111111

Can we go back to the old, I mean REALLY OLD radios that were literally ready in about 10 seconds. These were before WiFi and while I love the benefits that WiFi brings our t-shirt shooter is one of my favorite robots because it has that old IFI system where the robot and driver station are both ready to go in about 20 seconds tops.

Sure, but you will also remove the possibility of teams having camera feeds back to their driver station, and you will likely have to cut out a lot of the other diagnostics as well, because the bandwidth on those things is pretty low.

You also have to start dealing with the limited range and the connection dropping when certain objects come between your DS and your robot again.

As for the DLinks from previous seasons- one of the major reasons they were dropped was that they were the biggest culprit in the "christmas trees" that we saw in the past. This is when all robots on the field would start moving jerkily or dropping out completely. The DLinks didn't quite conform to the WiFi standards, in a way that almost guaranteed christmas trees in poor connectivity situations.

Picking a radio for FRC is not an easy task, and it is often a game of tradeoffs. Knowing the team at FRC working on it, I think they understand the tradeoffs and requirements very well and will make a good choice.