So basically I’m looking for an ethernet switch that would be adequate for the type of robot I’m personally looking at during the offseason (extremely overkill for a second year team but very cool)
After searching around I found a couple that seem to work but I’d like some input
The brainbox one seems to be the best option because of the ability to be powered straight off the PDH and the built it mounting holes which is just nice, but it’s the most expensive one.
While the brainbox has a wide input voltage range specified and is otherwise a robust switch, some teams have reported glitchiness with it (random short dropouts) unless it’s powered by a regulator. I suspect it doesn’t have enough supply noise isolation internally to deal with the extremely noisy power bus of a FRC robot.
if you’re willing to compromise a bit any 20ish dollar amazon switch is good enough with some hot glue on the power input and a nice 3d printed case to hold it in place, the tplink one you posted is good enough.
Are you already using all the switched ports on your VH-109 Radio? The best switch is one you don’t need from a part count that could cause failure perspective.
Most generic gigabit unmanaged switches work reasonably well as others have said. The tricky part is the power supply, which the Zebraswitch notes have good commentary on. If your chosen switch takes 5V input then you generally can use a good buck regulator only, and for a 12V switch you need to use a buck-boost regulator to handle conditions where the battery dips under 12V. Pololu has a good variety of well-implemented and small voltage regulators that work for this.
One thing to watch out for is that some super-cheap 100M only switches have a switch chip inside that can’t even push 100M between each port. I’d avoid the absolute cheapest ($10 or less) switches.
We’ve used a NETGEAR GS208 Switch for a few years now and it’s worked great, and we like that it’s pretty lightweight due to the plastic housing. One thing to note though, we have been opting to open up the case and solder power wires directly to the leads, rather than using the barrel connector. Since we started doing that, they’ve been rock solid. Pretty sure it runs on straight 12v too, so no need for a regulator (though it doesn’t hurt to have for brown out prevention).
If you don’t need 8 ports like we do, they also make a 5-port version of it.
And what I’ve been doing is use a usb to barrel jack (luckily my water flosser use the same type of charging cable) and power it through one of my co-processor USB port, no extra buck converter or VRM needed. Never run into any issue with it.
