Ah the memories (Actually more like AHHHHHHHH! THE MEMORIES! as they drag you off to the padded room in a straightjacket).
As stated above, this issue did occur in Florida last year. Considering that the regional is on UCFâs campus, a campus with over 50,000 students, itâs not a surprise that there was a lot of wifi in the area. Teams would spend over 5 minutes trying to connect to the field only to be told to try again next time because it was taking too long. Once a team did connect, however, their chances of being found the next time increased exponentially, at least that is what was explained to me. I believe that is why the problem only really occurred on Thursday, because by Friday everyone had been able to connect at least once. At our next regional the FTA wanted everyone to connect to the field at least once on Thursday whether or not they were inspected, probably for this reason.
I think youâre misreading that. I think your configuration would be illegal because if the bot were placed flat on the bridge or carpet your bumpers would not be entirely in the zone.
But I think his point is that the robot is already flat on the bridge, the or only requiring one of them to make it legal. And of course what is âflat?â
Not that I know all of the details on the radio issue, but it sounds to me like they have identified a firmware issue with the model that they were using. It sounds like working with the radio providers, they have identified a model without the issue. Rather than replace all the radios for a rare complication, they have a plan to deal with a known issue if and when it occurs.
Again, Iâm not an expert, but I assume that proprietary radio bands, especially ones with lots of bandwidth are susceptible to implementations issues in firmware and logistical surprises too.
There is nothing about the new system that precludes a special band or radio, but using off-the-shelf products, teams can pretty easily have their own N speed setups in their school or shop.
Iâm also curious what you mean by FPGA overhead?
Greg McKaskle
I think you may be missing some of the physics. Your robot is not adhered to the bridge. Therefore you are lifting the weight off of one set of wheels and putting it all on the others. Yes, it changes the balance, but not necessarily enough to account for the distance raised. Think carefullyâŚ
If I have a 6 wheel drive robot and my CG is on one side or the other of the middle wheels, then I do not need the other set of wheels to remain flat on the bridge. If I stick something out between the wheels that are not needed (and hanging over the edge of the bridge) I will remain flat with respect to the bridge the entire time. Once balance, we retract. This update gives me the ammunition I need to fight for this mechanism.
What we really need is a clear and concise ruling on this bridge balancing device.
There is a reason many of us are asking the questions so specifically. The extra clarification in the latest update makes it clear to me that if my robot looks like it is not raising its bumper relative to the surface that it is on, then we are good.
The fact that so many of us are not in agreement means we may need further clarification.
me too, inquiring minds want to know !
They should just put big sheets of lead all around the field to stop all the arena wireless signals. 
Donât need lead. A Faraday cage ought to work just as well, and those arenât lead.
Right-o. Thatâs all I was saying; that this ruling isnât so much a ruling as an additional vaguery. I wouldnât count on the legality until something much more explicitly phrased comes along!
The point was that the lead would prevent everyone from seeing the field. Hence the
Hmm, I donât like the wireless bridge thing. To be blunt, I donât have a lot of faith in last minute swapping of parts by either officials or ourselves. Our team has had trouble with that in the past and itâs been a real problem.
I think part of what it takes to do well in competitions like this is a matter of reducing risk and mitigating potential problems before they arise. For instance, last year the team counted on a potentiometer to determine position. They ended up destroying the pot (never heard how) and had to replace it. The new one wasnât of the same value and so they immediately burned up a motor by driving past the stop on the arm. The solution would have been some calibration system combined with limit switches. That would make it possible to swap parts and even if something went wrong and been working properly in minutes. Weâve learned this lesson so this year all parts with max/min extents have limit switches along with encoders and what not.
The problem is that something with configuration like the bridge isnât quite as amiable to swamping. A tiny setting off and nothing works and we are scrambling to track it down. We have the Axis camera, onboard computer, and cRIO all plugged into the bridge. There is a lot happening and it will have been extensively tested before the competition begins. Is there any way we could simply buy the newer bridge and use it in the competition so no swapping needed? The $100 cost isnât much compared to the piece of mind that having it already tested and working on the bot will bring.
-Mike
The update explicitly says this wonât be allowed.
I too am a skeptic on how the whole bridge swap will work.
-How will teams mount it in a few minutes? We usually velcro our radio to our robot, then zip tie around it so it has no way of falling off. We also zip tie all of the wires to the radio in such a way that they canât come out, and add duct tape to the wire connections since some of them are friction fit (which is really really bad, in our experience).
-The backup radio is significantly larger (~3" in one dimension) than the old one. I expect that it simply wonât fit on some robots designed for the existing radio.
-Since the backup radio runs on 12v instead of 5v, they are giving us a 4.5â power cable to plug into our PD board? The update seems to indicate that the power cable goes with a bridge (and that each team will get a power cable in the queue line). I donât see how they expect teams to integrate it into their wire harness (zip tie it in) if the radio is decently far away from the PD board, in a few minutes. I donât see how they expect teams to assume reliable radio power (which is very critical) if they canât secure the wire from damage.
-All of this is done before every match (as many as 12 quals + up to 9 elim matches)?
I echo all of these concerns. Hopefully weâll never find out how it would work.
Rather than hope it never comes up, I think they should just let us use either if we are concerned about it. I know Iâm going to have the team order one on Monday night just so we can make sure it will mount right in with our existing system. We were planning on tucking it in pretty tight and the larger one will simply not fit unless we do some work. The current plan was the mount everything low and tight to a removable base. We were even making custom cords to keep run lengths short and controlled between some of the components. This is the type of change that I foresee causing us lots of problems on competition day if we donât plan for it now.
-Mike
Having lived through FLR last year, Iâll take any solution to the problem and be grateful for it.
Does anyone know how the replacement wireless radio will be furnished for mounting? I wish they would tell us it will have Velcro, and which side of Velcro it will have.