[FTC]: Samantha? Like it or hate it?

[EthanMiller]

New information from an informant at Clarkson shows that some of the problems may have resulted from poor setup on Clarkson's part - I don't know the details of it, but it sounds like not quite everything was set up right and/or tested realistically.

[Random Dude]

In terms of router naming, one issue I ran into when running a scrimmage out in Oregon, was the school I was at already had a router named "FTC_FIELD", which I didn't know at the time. I think it got turned on part way through the morning, and I suddenly had 1/2 my teams complaining they couldn't connect.
Once I tracked that down, I decided to put custom names on all my competition routers. That way if someone accidentally turns on a FTC_FIELD router at a competition, my network won't collapse. I also plan on running around with a WiFi scanner and disabling any rogue access points.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Random Dude

In terms of router naming, one issue I ran into when running a scrimmage out in Oregon, was the school I was at already had a router named "FTC_FIELD", which I didn't know at the time. I think it got turned on part way through the morning, and I suddenly had 1/2 my teams complaining they couldn't connect.
Once I tracked that down, I decided to put custom names on all my competition routers. That way if someone accidentally turns on a FTC_FIELD router at a competition, my network won't collapse. I also plan on running around with a WiFi scanner and disabling any rogue access points.

My understanding has been that the FCS connects to FTC_FIELD by default whenever it is present. It only looks for and connects to the secondary SSIDs when there is not an FTC_FIELD present.

We've competed up here for the last two weeks. The first event was late in getting started because of interference from routers running their own FTC_FIELD. After that problem was weeded out, the event ran smoothly, for the most part.

This weekend, there were fewer problems with conflicting network names, though we did have some trouble with persistent intermittent connection loss -- if that makes sense -- and it resulted in some pretty terrible consequences to teams and robots. The folks running things were great about troubleshooting it and rerunning matches as necessary, but it still meant that several robots broke or were broken because of our inability to properly control the robots.

The wifi system operates better than the bluetooth system, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a good system.

[Random Dude]

Originally Posted by Madison

My understanding has been that the FCS connects to FTC_FIELD by default whenever it is present. It only looks for and connects to the secondary SSIDs when there is not an FTC_FIELD present.

We've competed up here for the last two weeks. The first event was late in getting started because of interference from routers running their own FTC_FIELD. After that problem was weeded out, the event ran smoothly, for the most part.

<SNIP>

The wifi system operates better than the bluetooth system, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a good system.

The behavior was actually changed in a newer version of the firmware (which should have been installed at your competition). Samantha has two network configs stored in it (typically FTC_FIELD and FTC_PIT, but can be anything). It will toggle between then approximately every 6 seconds, until a FCS attempts to connect to it, and then it will remain on that network until power is cycled.


I'll consider it good if I can get through my 7 tournaments without having to babysit the connections of every single match. (Because, it sure felt like I had to do that with bluetooth last year)

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Random Dude

I'll consider it good if I can get through my 7 tournaments without having to babysit the connections of every single match. (Because, it sure felt like I had to do that with bluetooth last year)

The only thing I'll say that's definitely positive about the Samantha module is the fact that we no longer have to lug a laptop and controller pair around. Our teams (at least) understood the nuances of bluetooth enough to remove all connection issues (usually reset the stack on the laptop and then reset the brick every 5-6 matches). We only shut off once throughout all of last year, and video revealed that was because another robot's outer mechanism went into our robot and wound up hitting a button on the NXT. If we could at least figure out what's going on with the Samantha, the kids really wouldn't care if they had to babysit it again ...

I would like to thank the feedback in this thread that points out helpful tips -- these things will definitely be passed on since often times other teams I've met barely have the capacity to program the thing to begin with let alone read every email, blog, and forum thread on the subject. We'll see how things go at the next qualifier in January.

[gblake]

Folks,

This system seems to be extremely vulnerable to malicious mischief - Well intentioned people are shooting themselves in the foot. What happens if that one bad apple shows up in the stands? Does it need to be made more mischief-proof for next season?

Blake

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by gblake

Folks,

This system seems to be extremely vulnerable to malicious mischief - Well intentioned people are shooting themselves in the foot. What happens if that one bad apple shows up in the stands? Does it need to be made more mischief-proof for next season?

Blake

Blake,
would you mind expanding on that statement? I'm not sure I know what you mean.

[Joachim]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Blake,
would you mind expanding on that statement? I'm not sure I know what you mean.

I am not Blake, but--

One of the field controllers/queuing station operators from the PA championship of last year told me they had to ask a person in the stands to leave the competition room. Apparently the person was holding a cell phone or similar device, pointing it at the arena, and broadcasting some kind of Bluetooth signals.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Joachim

I am not Blake, but--

One of the field controllers/queuing station operators from the PA championship of last year told me they had to ask a person in the stands to leave the competition room. Apparently the person was holding a cell phone or similar device, pointing it at the arena, and broadcasting some kind of Bluetooth signals.

I think Blake was talking about the current system that is not bluetooth. This is why I am confused.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Blake,
would you mind expanding on that statement? I'm not sure I know what you mean.

If the "FTC_FIELD" that has been diccussed below is a WiFi SSID, and if the Robots (automatically?) connect to FTC_FIELD (or to some other well-known SSID); then isn't it pretty easy for me to innocently (see other posts) or maliciously start up a WiFi device that broadcasts an FTC_FIELD SSID, and consequently foul up teams' connection attempts.

Blake

[Random Dude]

Dealing with innocently is fairly simple to do, and is likely the bigger issue. FTAs just need to ignore FIRST's instructions, and use a unique SSID for their competition & practice routers.

Maliciously is harder to avoid, but I'm less worried about that. FRC has been using WiFi for several years now, and I haven't heard of any major issues with bad actors there.

At the tournaments I (as FTA) am running though, I will be actively running WiFi scanners and tracking down any APs that don't belong to the venue. This should hopefully reduce the threat of these issues, as well as know when it is an issue that is affecting matches.

[jefft]

Technically the FTC_Field is supposed to be password protected and each Samantha module is "programmed" with the correct password to connect to the secured FTC_Field network. This is done during software inspection. So, if a robot hasn't passed software inspection, it won't have the configuration file to allow the Samantha to connect to the right network.

Yes, somebody could still have a rouge FTC_Field network in the stand, but any robot that has been inspected would only connect to the correct wifi network.

This doesn't mean that somebody cannot "play" the system and use it to their advantage. I am not going into details into some of the scenarios that my FTA has shared with me.

Jeff

[Random Dude]

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. Even with the password, two APs with the same name will confuse Samantha, even with a secret password. I had a field go down during a scrimmage in November becuase of that exact reason. (Hence my decision to use non-standard names for all future events)

[PSHRobotics]

Originally Posted by jefft

Technically the FTC_Field is supposed to be password protected and each Samantha module is "programmed" with the correct password to connect to the secured FTC_Field network. This is done during software inspection. So, if a robot hasn't passed software inspection, it won't have the configuration file to allow the Samantha to connect to the right network.

Yes, somebody could still have a rouge FTC_Field network in the stand, but any robot that has been inspected would only connect to the correct wifi network.

This doesn't mean that somebody cannot "play" the system and use it to their advantage. I am not going into details into some of the scenarios that my FTA has shared with me.

Jeff

The samantha will attempt to connect to the FTC_Field network with the strongest signal strength - from my experience, testing the samantha with two APs broadcasting FTC_Field with different passwords. Even after the samantha is given a password to use, it might just continue attempting (and failing) to connect to the rouge FTC_Field.
Now I would hope the samantha, once it is initially connected to the correct FTC_Field and FCS, would stay locked in through whatever protocol it uses to identify with the FCS but after seeing robots randomly disconnect I do not think that the protocol has this kind of a lock built in.

Random Dude's solution, I believe is the best. You might want to set your AP's to have hidden network names so that someone can't change their networks's SSID to be the same as yours. Are the FTA's allowed to change the initial configuration file that is put on the samantha during inspection? When my team was inspected (one of the first teams), the USB drive was taken out what looked like official packaging.

Regardless of all of that, if someone is trying to create problems with wifi, especially from the stands, they will likely fail because of signal strength. The fields are much closer to the official AP's than they would be to any rouge AP's (or at least they should be). Now there are signal focusing and boosting devices, but they should not be too hard to spot.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by PSHRobotics

Regardless of all of that, if someone is trying to create problems with wifi, especially from the stands, they will likely fail because of signal strength. The fields are much closer to the official AP's than they would be to any rouge AP's (or at least they should be). Now there are signal focusing and boosting devices, but they should not be too hard to spot.

I think we all need to take a breath here. We are talking about someone contentiously and maliciously cheating in a FIRST competition. This is not your average population we are talking about here. GP is not just a phrase we use in front of judges, right?