DS and robot through home router 2017

[slomobile]

I have heard at events, read on CD, and seen hints in screensteps that 'advanced' teams connect their driver stations, multiple robots, and multiple programming computers wirelessly through a single home router. Yet I have not seen any instructions that include the robot OM5P-AN or OM5P-AC as configured with the 2017 FRC radio configuration tool which eliminates the radio's manual management interface. Has anyone made this work? How must the home router be configured?

We have a 2017 control system with OM5P-AN wired and all firmware updated. When configured as access point it works fine, but we have had issues in 2015 and 2016 with things working at home but failing when the bridge was reprogrammed at regional events. We want to avoid that drama by testing at home as close as possible to event conditions with the robot radio in bridge mode. Also, we are tired of having to disconnect from the robot each time we need to look something up online.

We have access to several home routers, but started with https://www.gl-inet.com/ar300m/ Using FMS lite mode in the 2017 FRC radio configuration tool went as expected but the home router never logged a connection with the robot radio. If we just program the robot radio in bridge mode, without FMS lite mode, what conditions is the robot radio expecting at the router? SSID, password, port forwards, etc? Once configured that way, what do we have to do to make everything connect since the robot radio won't be broadcasting a SSID?

[Mark McLeod]

Here's an example of a setup like this just put OM5Ps in place of the DLinks.
The OM5Ps would be programmed for Bridge mode with the identical team numbers (just the OM5Ps, not the roboRIOs).


The playing field differs only in the establishment of VPNs for each robot and the use of security codes.

[slomobile]

That is what I thought. Did not work for me.
Field router is 10.0.0.4, no encryption, team# ssid. Opened port 5353 on field router for good measure.
I cannot know exactly how the robot radio is configured because it no longer contains a webserver interface. I used the 2017 radio configuration utility 17.2 , password and robot name empty, open mesh bridge mode, no firewall, with bandwidth limit.
OM5P-AN power light is on solid blue, light next to it is lit blue and blinks occasionally. DS connects to field router fine and appears in field router log, robot radio does not appear in field router log. Connecting to roboRIO with USB shows self assigned 169.254.15.156 on ethernet port. What is the next step to troubleshoot this?

[Mark McLeod]

I have to correct what I wrote before.
The SSID on each of the Bridges will have to be the same as the SSID of the AP.
That makes the Bridges connect to the AP of the same name.
The right way to handle it is with a managed switch or an AP supporting SSIDs for each unique team number.

So, using the FRC Radio Configuration tool to set each robot radio to the same team number, and giving the AP the same SSID would allow them to connect.
However, this might cause some problems, since the Tool will also give all the radios the same IP number. We can't use a browser to set the SSID separately, which would be the preference. I'd have to experiment to see if there is an easy way around this conflict.


If you have last years AN bridges and last season's FRC Radio Tool, then you could use it to set the old firmware and the unique team numbers, then browse to change just the SSID to make it a common one.

Your robots can be set up with different team numbers than the Bridge it uses.

[slomobile]

At this point, I am only testing with a single robot and single driver station, so an IP conflict cannot be the root cause. But to assign a different ssid that team number, just assign a robot name, which appends that text to the end of the ssid. Theoretically... as there is really no way I can think of to verify what the configuration tool has written except to look at the hex of the firmware which would be Greek to me.

[Mark McLeod]

Did you setup DHCP on the AP to assign addresses in the 10.te.am.20-200 range?

[slomobile]

No I did not! It will take me a little bit to figure out how to write the file that sets the DHCP lease range, but I can reserve DHCP for the test hardware connected now by MAC address, I just need to know what the robot radio host name is.

[slomobile]

Thank you so much for your help Mark. No success yet. Is it the /etc/ethers file that I need to modify to "setup DHCP on the AP to assign addresses in the 10.te.am.20-200 range"? Do you have a template for that?

[slomobile]

Another snafu, with the field router at 10.0.0.4 with 255.255.255.0 netmask, it is impossible to have it assign DHCP addresses in the 10.te.am.20-200 range because(I think) that is a different subnet.

[slomobile]

Ok, DHCP is configured and functioning on the field router. But that doesn't seem to be the problem.

As I said before, when the robot radio is configured as Access Point, it works fine. However, the point of this exercise was to test with the radio in bridge mode as it would be at an event. When the configuration tool is used to set it in bridge mode, whether normal bridge or FMS lite, the radio will not respond to ping requests on any interface wired or wireless. Can you think of any way to verify that the robot radio is actually functioning as expected in bridge mode?

[FrankJ]

The subnet mask of the FMS computer is 255.0.0.0. The quirkyness of IP addressing allows it to talk to sub nets of 255.xxx.xxx.xxx as long as the IP address is 10.xxx.xxx.xxx, I think that in the full FMS the DHCP lives in the wireless router and is different for each robot. (each robot has its own SSID) VPN and smart switches allow for that.

The new radio might not be configured to respond to ping in bridge mode or you have the wrong IP for the bridge. As long as it connects to the AP its IP address really doesn't matter. The way to test it is to see if you can connect or ping something (like the roborio) connected to the radio.

[slomobile]

So it looks like we need some more information about the FMS DHCP server rules and ARP in order to ensure everything is addressable. The roboRio has a name roborio-XXXX-frc.local but the radio does not as far as I know, and it is not clear that it has a static IP in bridge mode. Therefore, the only basis I have to assign an address to the robot radio via DHCP is according to MAC address.

How does FMS do it? Does the radio kiosk record the radio MAC along with team number to be later passed along to FMS?

[nickmcski]

Originally Posted by slomobile

So it looks like we need some more information about the FMS DHCP server rules and ARP in order to ensure everything is addressable. The roboRio has a name roborio-XXXX-frc.local but the radio does not as far as I know, and it is not clear that it has a static IP in bridge mode. Therefore, the only basis I have to assign an address to the robot radio via DHCP is according to MAC address.

How does FMS do it? Does the radio kiosk record the radio MAC along with team number to be later passed along to FMS?

To my knowledge, FMS does not need to know the IP address of the radio. I know for sure the Radio configuration console does not send any information back to FMS.