Help please! Can Robots be turned on in queue prior to Matches?

[Team4150]

Sorry, this may sound like a dumb question, and I should remember this from last year but: Can robots be on from Pit to Arena?

We have established a stable connection with our Kinect camera setup but it requires us not to lose connection once we have or else we have to set the whole thing up again, which is tedious.

Thanks for your help.
-FRobotics Team 4150

[dcarr]

This is probably up to the FTA at each event. So you should ask, YMMV.

At one event I was at last year, teams were instructed to power on robots before coming onto the field to expedite the connection process.

[Team4150]

Thank you very much.
That calms me a little bit.

I will make sure we are cleared this Thursday when the Pittsburgh Regional comes to town.

[Jeffy]

We always turn our bot on in queue to allow the pneumatic system to pressurize.

[jds2001]

Shouldn't you pressurize in the pit prior to queuing? That's what we did. But that's a little OT for this thread. We turned ours on once it was placed on the field.

[eddie12390]

Originally Posted by Team4150

Thank you very much.
That calms me a little bit.

I will make sure we are cleared this Thursday when the Pittsburgh Regional comes to town.

Speaking from Pittsburgh regional experience, we (and a majority of other teams) have always had our robot on before we put it on the field. It makes it a lot easier to know that everything is powered on if you can check before you put it on the field. You may have trouble maintaning a connection, though, depending on the method that you are using to create and hold the connection. You should definitely speak with an FTA and good luck at the regional.

[engunneer]

I think you need to find a way to make it survive a robot reboot. If there is a field fault or a significant delay, the FTA may request you to reboot on the field.

What do you need to do to get the connection at the moment?

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by Team4150

Sorry, this may sound like a dumb question, and I should remember this from last year but: Can robots be on from Pit to Arena?

We have established a stable connection with our Kinect camera setup but it requires us not to lose connection once we have or else we have to set the whole thing up again, which is tedious.

Thanks for your help.
-FRobotics Team 4150

I don't suppose you could write an AutoHotKey script or something to set it up for you?

[Kevin Sevcik]

You'll never be able to legally maintain a connection from the pit all the way to running a match on the field. In the pit, you MUST only communicate with the robot on tether. On the field your robot is wireless and your driver station is connected to the wireless network through a wired LAN connection. I can think of no way for your driver station to stay linked to your robot through this process unless you're illegally wirelessly communicating with your robot. Or, i suppose, if you have two lan ports and do something exceedingly weird and clunky that's likely to be a huge delay of the game.

[engunneer]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

You'll never be able to legally maintain a connection from the pit all the way to running a match on the field. In the pit, you MUST only communicate with the robot on tether. On the field your robot is wireless and your driver station is connected to the wireless network through a wired LAN connection. I can think of no way for your driver station to stay linked to your robot through this process unless you're illegally wirelessly communicating with your robot. Or, i suppose, if you have two lan ports and do something exceedingly weird and clunky that's likely to be a huge delay of the game.

I believe they are configuring it via the wired LAN, then disconnecting to connect to the field. I think their only requirement is that the robot itself stay on, not the DS.

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

I don't suppose you could write an AutoHotKey script or something to set it up for you?

+1 for AHK, but it seems to be a robot configuration problem. I do wonder what the Kinect is connected to - Rasb-pi?
If you ever need any AHK help, please let me know.