We know that the new radio is available for purchase. I’m looking up some information about new radio(VH-109).
But the more I dug into it, the more confused I became.
Are there any benefits to using the new radio, or am I missing something important?
As far as I know, it’s not necessary, right?
The new radios are required for the 2025 season, and all teams will receive one as part of the kit of parts in January.
The new radio will operate on the 6GHz band which will (in theory) have less noise from other wifi networks or hotspots.
It also has more ethernet ports so some teams wont have to run a separate switch on their robot. And those extra ports support power over ethernet so you can power your co-processor with them.
So, can’t we use those old radios in competition anymore?
Appreciate you, is there any official page talking about this announcement?
Nope.
Other than in some offseason events this summar/fall, no.
There were blog posts on the old FIRST Inspires FRC blog from late last year talking about the new radio for champs, and again in early spring announcing it was official for 2025, but as they’ve moved the FRC blog I’m not sure the links are valid any longer.
Some quick searching here will probably pop up those posts.
they announced the changes in this post Technology Updates: Past, Present, Future, and Beyond | FIRST
Thank you so much. I’ve seen those posts, but I didn’t realize that the old mesh AP is no longer used in competitions. You guys really helped us.
It’s also important for teams to note that the recommended way to practice with these radios at home requires you to have two of them: one for the robot, and one to act as an access point that you hardwire to an ethernet port on your driver station laptop, and power from a wall outlet (see VH-117 power supply).
If you just use the one radio that comes in the kickoff kit, you’ll only be able to use it with the built-in 2.4 GHz connection to your driver station laptop, and this didn’t work very well for us. With the two-radio setup it works well.