Rumor or Real: RF Tether product

[joe_balint]

Some of my controls guys have been hinting that there is an RF tether out there somewhere. I've been searching the forums for about 25 minutes and the closest I got was an old link to team696 selling 25ft and 50ft tether cables for the old pre2004 control systems. Does anyone have any more info on a true wireless-RF tether for the current IFI controllers? If so, I would appreciate the link or any contact info. Thanks. -Joe

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Whats the point?

[jgannon]

How would this differ from just hooking up an IFI radio to the Radio port?

[Sscamatt]

Maybe you could beef it up to like 2.4Ghz and use it at competition.

[steven114]

I would much rather use it as a wireless programmer

[Sscamatt]

You can do it with bluetooth:
http://www.codebluecommunications.co...Generation.htm

Expensive though, ~$300

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by joe_balint

Some of my controls guys have been hinting that there is an RF tether out there somewhere. I've been searching the forums for about 25 minutes and the closest I got was an old link to team696 selling 25ft and 50ft tether cables for the old pre2004 control systems. Does anyone have any more info on a true wireless-RF tether for the current IFI controllers? If so, I would appreciate the link or any contact info. Thanks. -Joe

The thread you are looking for is http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=31931

However, (1) you can not program the robot with a SMiRF and, more importantly, (2) use of any RF transmitter on the robot or OI during competitions is illegal under this year's rules.

We did purchase a SMiRF and we are using it for code development. It's cool! However, we will not be bringing same to our competitions.

[dez250]

-All programming at competitions must be done via a serial cable from your computer to the RC.

-While in the pits there is no wireless communication allowed, that includes everything from your robot having to be on tether to test and the use of walkie talkie radios being "banned".

There are NO exceptions for these rules and must be followed at all times.

[cdawzrd]

At one point, IFI was selling wireless program/debug modems... i dunno if you could tether with them, but you could program remotely. They seem to have discontinued them.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by cdawzrd

At one point, IFI was selling wireless program/debug modems... i dunno if you could tether with them, but you could program remotely.

Those could only be used to program the old PBASIC-based robot controllers. The new C-based RCs require a baud rate of 115200 bps for programming which the Stamper radios are not capable of (likely the reason why IFI stopped selling them).

[russell]

I have been thinking about a way that one could reprogram the robot remotely using the provided radio modems. You could even do it in competition I think, though it would be so incredibly slow that there is no way you could download a whole program during one match. Basically, there is a way to use the radio modem to actually send bytes to the RC isnt there? If so you write your own dashboard type interface, which sends the program one byte at a time to the RC, which in turn uses the TTL port to give it to an external programming thingy. Then when the programming thingy has the whole program it goes and downloads it to the RC. I havent looked into what this programing thingy would have to be, but I know that one can get programmers for PIC microcontrollers which you plug into your serial port, and if you were to use the serial output ability of a PIC to drive the programmer, which in turn programmed the RC then you could do it. Like I say it would be incredibly slow. The other way would be to simply have an onboard computer which retrieves the user bytes from the RC then runs a modified ifi loader to download the program. Is it legal to put say an old 386 on our robot, and only use the RC for IO, and do all of the actual processing on the 386? If so how would we do the cost accounting stuff, as I dont think they exactly make them any more?

[steven114]

Whether you can find rules allowing it or not, the benefits of reprogramming the robot in the middle of the match seem negligible. Much more useful would to be able to not have to hook the laptop up to the robot to program it...

[sanddrag]

We've still got the 25' cables for $12 shipped priority. Add $2 for a small gender changer to get a female-female cable, in essence. Or you can use just the 25' M-F cable as an extension to your red F-F cable.

Upon request, we can get 50' M-F cables and 10' F-F cables. On the 50 footers, I am not sure about signal loss over the length. I know with a BASIC stamp it doesn't like to load code over a cable that long, but I haven't tried it with the Pic controllers. I am certain the 25' will not cause any problems in programming or tether on any controller.

http://team696.org/forsale.html

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by russell

I have been thinking about a way that one could reprogram the robot remotely using the provided radio modems. You could even do it in competition I think,...

What part of R53 do you not understand? Wireless communications to or from the robot is illegal.

[Anthony Kesich]

Originally Posted by steven114

Whether you can find rules allowing it or not, the benefits of reprogramming the robot in the middle of the match seem negligible. Much more useful would to be able to not have to hook the laptop up to the robot to program it...

Our team has been looking at this. We went out and purchased a low profile motherboard with a PII on it and a flash card reader. We then bought a one gig flash card. We're gonna put this setup on the robot if we have the available weight (which it looks like we will this year). At the very least, we are going to use it for blackboxing and programming.

We would have a wireless card on it and run XP. This way we could run remote desktop, trasnfer over the code, and program through an Ad-Hoc network. Granted we would remove the wireless card before matches, but it would be very useful for testing code and quick changes to programming.

Even if the wireless wouldnt be allowed in the Pits (though i dont see how WiFi would interfere) it is still going to be useful for blackboxing and programming during build season.

-Tony K