[FRC Blog] 2016 Radio Update

[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 10/8/15: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-2016-radio-update

2016 Radio Update

Blog Date: Thursday, October 8, 2015 - 13:30

Today’s blog comes from Kate Pilotte, Kit of Parts Manager for FRC.

I’m excited to announce that we’ve selected a new robot radio for the 2016 season. We will be switching to Open Mesh’s OM5P-AN dual band access point.


2016 Radio with Pear

Pear for Size #wehavenobananas

Each team will get one in their Kickoff Kit, and they’re available at a variety of online retailers. AndyMark and Open Mesh have agreed to work together to accommodate lower pricing specifically for FRC teams, but we (FIRST & AndyMark) can’t publish the lower price due to contractual obligations. You’ll see the FRC specific price when you log in to an AndyMark account that’s affiliated with your team (if you don’t see it, contact webmaster@andymark.com).

Here’s the rub:

• fewer Ethernet ports (2)
• higher cost

But here’s why we’re really excited:

• still be able to use one device while at home and on the competition field (i.e. no secondary access point for use at home - for those of you who remember 2009)
• still able to use diagnostic LEDs (you’d be surprised how rare this feature is becoming)
• multiple features (bandwidth limit, QOS, etc.) that combine to decimate, if not eliminate, the “Christmas tree” phenomenon (network congestion that results in robot radios rapidly dropping in and out during a match)
• the firmware is open, so we can control it (the FRC firmware will not be available until Kickoff)

In addition to internal testing, these radios have been used at IRI (Kevin told you about that in his guest blog post, technically he was testing both the OM5P and OM5P-AN), at the Mainely SPIRIT off-season in September (every team used this instead of their old DLinks), and at last week’s Israeli off-season (also all teams used this instead of their DLinks). A subset of our Beta Test teams will also be testing the radios and programming tools for the at-home configuration (AP mode).

There are still some bugs we’re working out with the firmware, but we’re excited for this new solution.

Good luck this season!