pic: Has anyone seen my teams router?!?!?!?

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Jeff 801

Please do tell more (Chris Elston) or who ever

As others have said, we had to use FMS Lite to run the field. BTW, you need an internet connection to get FMS Lite installed for the first time...learned that the hard way too.

What happened to us is everyone of course had their routers set for fixed IP like they are suppose to based on the FIRST recommended IP format. I.E. our number 1501 was

10.15.1.2 for the router.

829 was:

10.8.29.2 etc, etc...you get the picture.

Well the problem with this and FMS Lite is everyone needs to be in the same SUB NET...

Will Laws actually caught the fact we are using the "wrt610n" routers that are classified as "home networking" devices and they don't allow you to change the subnet. It's a pull down box in the router configuration screen 255.255.255.0 was our only choice of a few fixed pull down box choices.

So this was a BIG problem...instead of going into the team radios one more time changing the IP address wasting more time.... we decided to try and setup 18 home networks and FMS Lite communicated ok with all of them because we was able to configure the NIC card in the computer to 255.0.0.0 sub net mask.

I am just amazed we had power strips, about 20 CAT5 patch cables on hand to daisy chain them all together, and nearly everyone brought their router. That was amazing too.

It was an interesting problem to over come and trying to decide what to do, so we ran with leaving the IP address alone, and setting all the routers up as is because by this time we had consumed about 3-4 hours of the morning trying to fix the field computer. What was interesting and not mentioned is within our group, we multi-tasked the problem.

Mark was working Plan "A".
Brett was working Plan "B"
Chris and Samir was working Plan "C".
Will was working A,B, and C.

We didn't just work on them one at a time, we efficiently worked on all of them simultaneously, we ran wires to routers, obtained and scrounged routers from Hugh's team Red Alert, amazed Hugh had two switches on-site we could use.

I couldn't believe it actually worked. I have never in my life seen anything like it. It's not text book or anything like that it doesn't have to be and people could stand here now and pick it all apart, but the point of this whole ordeal is there was a problem to overcome: Will Laws, Samir Shaikh, Brett Heininger, Mark Koors, Andy Baker, Hugh Myers and myself all worked together to come up with a solution to the problem. It didn't matter what it looked like, it was just neat to experience the dynamics of problem solving with six other strange people you've never worked with before and to produce a fix like that is something Will, Samir and Brett (students) will never forget. I am happy to be apart of something that was surely very stressful, but the amount of team work, inspiration and our ability to learn from each other was something even myself will cherish. Those are the experiences in FIRST that you want to cherish and never forget later in life. Every FIRST robotics team desires to solve problems and work together no matter the circumstances. This was certainly no exception and we wasn't even building a robot.

Fire hazard? Sure it was. About 500 pair of eyes looking over you're shoulder for 3 hours and that was the last thing on our mind, we just wanted to see robots move.

Being innovative is how to survive this down economy. Big companies need to think of ways that are outside the box and may break a few rules along the way, but certainly if they can jump the rut, good things will come out of this recession. Look back at innovations that occurred during the great depression. The great depression spurred an amazing period of creativity. Rules were broken to obtain innovation.

Have you thought outside the box lately? I've made some new friends for life through this weekend's journey. It was a pleasure to work with them all.

Chris Elston