Competition Radio Interference Solution?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by STORMCENTRE

just an idea.....separate and set aside channels for the pit would be my fix.

There aren't enough channels to do that.

The radio modems provided to us have 40 channels. They are apparently not quite selective enough to be able to use adjacent channels at close range without risking interference; I think I remember someone saying that only 14 of the channels are really usable at the same time in the same area. The user-selectable channels are 04, 13, 22, 31, and 40 (a spacing of 9), with 01 added a couple of years ago.

Each field requires six channels, one for each robot. Some regionals have two fields. Championship has four fields running simultaneously, but the opposite corners are probably far enough away that interference isn't a real problem between them.

However, there are dozens to hundreds of robots in the pits. You do not want radios interfering with each other when teams are trying to work on their robots. The "no radios in the pits" prohibition is a good safety rule even if you can keep field interference from being an issue.