The FRC Blog had some important news about the 2013 robot radio.
All teams will receive in their Kickoff Kit, and be required to use, a new wireless bridge. The new bridge is still a D-Link DAP 1522, but only the hardware Rev B version will be permitted.
Also, legal motor controllers.
First, the list of approved motor controllers will be expanded. Specifically, Cross the Road Electronics’ Talon and Innovation First’s Victor 888 motor controllers will be legal.
This is interesting. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the Rev. B (aside from having to program them by hand). They’ve always seemed more reliable to me. My main concern is that they have less visible diagnostic lights. I’m excited to see what the other next steps are!
WOOHOO! They’re Officially Legal! 
My concerns with carrying the same radio for multiple years are the effects of long term wear & tear. Even though we don’t use them constantly, I think the older radios become less reliable just from age and being driven into walls and other robots, having the power cut and restored repeatedly, suffering brown-outs, etc.
I loved the old black bridges, but the older they get, the more idiosyncratic they become.
I think the same of most of our electronic components. Many of them are really tough like the Victor 884s and last for years if properly taken care of and kept clean, but students change and things happen given the time.
I’m glad that they are standardizing everyone on the newer hardware. But my $0.02…it’s going to take a lot more than a slightly newer WiFi radio to fix the underlying problems we’ve dealt with for years. Looking forward to the additional upcoming announcements.
I’m having a hard time locating information on the dlink 1522 rev b. Other than the front status light changes, are there any other notable changes on the router? Are there status lights on the back? Is the size/weight any different?
There is a difference on the back as well, the switch has no Auto setting and two different AP settings.
Here is the Rev B manual.
Where the switch on the back of the older version selected among AP/Auto/Bridge modes, the new one has AP2.4GHz/AP5HGz/Bridge. There don’t appear to be any lights on the new version to indicate active wired network connections.
Okay, so not much changed in the physical size of the router, and there’s no additional status lights. (Why less lights is better is beyond me)…Thanks.
I just hope they don’t release a “Rev C” in January to confuse everyone!
Now that everyone will have a 5Ghz radio…will they be switching entirely to that? In my experience (albeit limited) the range of 5Ghz is pretty poor but the speed and reliability seem great. Considering the field is a fairly small area, and that there will be a lot less happening on the 5Ghz band in most cases, that could be good…I trust they’ve taken this all into consideration.
Rev A supported 5 GHz as well. In fact, the field has used 5GHz for a couple of years now.
The Einstein report highlighted the “Failed Client Authorization” on page 7/8. Notably, they tried 5 different access points (including Rev B), and only Rev A was susceptible to the FCA attempt. Switching everyone to Rev B should help with this.
Ah, thank you for pointing that out. I did read the Einstein report but it’s been a while. Any thoughts on why there always seems to be a request for all mobile hotspots to be turned off? Those typically run on 2.4 and wouldn’t interfere with a 5Ghz field.
You answered your own question… “typically” isn’t good enough. Having a single team create a mobile hotspot on 5 GHz could be enough to disrupt play. Likewise, having laptops that support 5GHz attempting to create local networks could cause issues as well.
It’s generally considered better in situations like this to put a blanket ban out there instead of trusting everyone present to be able to know the difference. Simply removing as many possible points of failure is just good practice, and one of those points of failure is the audiences knowledge of wireless devices.
Of note, At the last off-season event I was at, my new 5 GHz iPhone 5 could detect the field AP, while older devices without 5GHz could not (I looked out of curiosity after reading the Einstein report, though I made no attempts to access the field with it!).
Indeed. For the same reason that Apple, Microsoft etc now ask all attending press to disable their hotspots during press conferences/demos.
That’s really interesting (naturally there are tons of people with iPhone 5’s now so I hope everyone exercises GP and self restraint).
On another note…I wonder if there has been any talk to release an updated FMS Lite. At all of the non-official events I’ve been to, field problems are incredibly persistent, and I hope that the changes and improvements brought to official competitions can benefit off-season events as well.
California should soon (next year) have FMS for all the off season events. We used FMS Delta 2010 this year, it wasn’t bad but the updated seasonal FMS would be awesome!
-RC
That’s awesome news, thanks RC!
Let’s see if we can’t clear some things up.
That’s right, the field has been 5Ghz only ever since the new control system was implemented in 20091. There’s a lot less going on in this band (in general), and there seems to be an easier time getting a clear channel at many venues.
It’s true that only the Rev A radios were affected2, however only that specific version of the Cisco 1252 firmware caused that effect.
A common problem that occurs with wifi devices in areas with a lot of networks has to do with the sheer number of networks, and the space in memory to store all of them. It is to my understanding after talking to field personnel at FLR that the issues that they see there aren’t a problem with networks in the 5Ghz band, but instead with the vast number of networks filling up the memory on the bridge before the field networks are detected. As far as I know, there is no way to ask the bridges to search only in the 5Ghz band for networks.
Specifically, what information are you looking for? In my opinion, the Einstein report was pretty thorough on it’s evaluation on most aspects of the field… Coupled with the FMS White Paper3, I think that FIRST has done a great job informing the community about the operation of their system, in addition to the challenges that they face, and that we face as a community.
Thanks for your great answers - cleared up a lot of my questions.
The Einstein report was outstanding in its thoroughness. It brought to light many underlying issues. They also implied (and Frank has also implied on the blog) that there are more announcements yet to come in terms of improvements to the control system for 2013. I’m sure we’ll see exactly what this entails at kickoff.
About the power connector on the 1522 rev a and b. Are they the same? In previous posts it has been mentioned that a specific power plug should be used and that the Radio Shack one does not fit correctly. Does some one have the correct power plug part number for the 1522? I think my team did buy it from rat shack and may be the cause of some of our recent 1522 reboots. I can’t find that CD thread.