Wireless Connection Problem

[Travis Hoffman]

Here's a fun one to ponder:

So the rookie team I mentioned earlier was still having trouble getting their wireless to link up even after changing to the 2.4 GHz setting on the bridge. Everything was configured exactly as intended, verified by me, but the system still wouldn't link up. So I set their bridge and router aside.

I took Team 48's router and bridge from last year - only the boxes - no cables or anything else - and connected them to the rookie team's kitbot and Classmate and such, using their cables. I reconfigured 48's hardware with the rookie team's IP's - wireless communication picked right up - no problems. Could ping the cRIO. Downloaded default program. Vision camera was transmitting images. Good stuff.

Now, after this, I individually reintroduced the rookie's gaming bridge and router into this system, such that a 48 device was talking to a rookie device each time. I expected at least one of the rookie devices to not work, based on the fact they never worked together, but guess what? Both devices worked. Weird. So I finally said what the heck, and connected both rookie devices back to their robot and Classmate. Instant wireless communication, vision camera pictures on the dashboard, no problems whatsoever. Other than unplugging and plugging the rookie devices, no other changes were made to their router and bridge between the time the devices wouldn't talk wirelessly and the time they would.

Maybe the rookie router/bridge needed to "learn" from the veteran router/ bridge how to do things the right way before they could stand alone and work on their own? Network device mentoring...awwwwww.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Here's a fun one to ponder:

...

Maybe the rookie router/bridge needed to "learn" from the veteran router/ bridge how to do things the right way before they could stand alone and work on their own? Network device mentoring...awwwwww.

I have never experienced a wireless network setup that was as easy as it was billed to be. There is always something not configured correctly, requiring a reset or animal sacrifice. More often then not I have no idea what was wrong or how it got corrected.

Needless to say, I was not impressed when the new communications gear came out. I'm actually not really impressed with the whole cRio based control system, or the inclusion of a laptop on the OI, but hey... I'll always be a child of the pBasic IFI days. I really pine for those simpler times, when I actually understood what every component of the control system did, and could tell them apart. These days I can't keep all the sidecars, breakout boards, modules, wireless dohickies, communication buses and speed controllers straight.

Heck, there are even three or four different voltages on the robot now! Back in my day we only had 12 volts to work with and we liked it that way. The really sneaky teams could get a few milliamps of 5v's, and talk to the controller with a photoresistor and a program set to blink an LED.

I feel like a dinosaur, wondering what happened to his beloved van door motors.

[Darkknight512]

Any news on this? I have the bridge setup to connect to the WRT160N by 2.4 Ghz only but even by using arp -d I still need to reboot the cRIO before I get a connection.

[sunnyacres]

I dont know if we have the same problem. we can connect to the robot with an ethernet cable, but unable with wireless. we had the same problem last year and so we didnt do so good. we are now trying to look for ideas to get this to work and we have reset everything, changed IP addresses and it just doesnt want to work so if anyone has any ideas give us a hollar