People are obsessing over price posts… I’m obsessing over the pear.
Within +/- $.02 range will work too;). BTW, I have already seen the price in AndyMark account…I just want somebody else to have the opportunity to share:D
For any of those that have already used this, would you care to comment on how fragile this device is? Susceptibility to brown-outs, electrical noise, or static shocks?
Smaller is good. Looks like its a 12v router which means it will need to be wired to the other side of the VRM, I’m sure that will mix up a few times (especially all the VRMs with stickers that say the radio should be powered off the 5v rail).
One of the ethernet ports is gigabit, doubt anyone needs that but possibly cool.
For anyone that needs more ports you can just get a small 5v or 12v switch and add all the ethernet ports you need.
Hopefully FMS will allow for a way to mix and match radios with the new and the old Dlink for off season events or its going to get pretty expensive to upgrade all those practice bots and prerookie robots.
These numbers are marginal in the grand scheme of things, but I’m still curious if anyone has them:
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What is the reduction in footprint size?
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What are the weight savings?
= buying a switch. Completely worth it for the firmware improvements though.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone starts offering a 3 or 4 port ethernet switch on a board that plugs into the roborio MXP before February.
http://xtdplink123456.en.ec21.com/Best_5_port_mini_ethernet--7540211_5953264.html
About half the footprint at around the same weight.
Why would it need to plug into the MXP? You have 2 ports on the new radio. 1 port will be for the roboRio, but you could just plug a standard switch into the other port.
This may be the best thing since sliced bread and maybe I’m not seeing it, but it does seem a bit expensive to me as well.
This is cheaper than I remember paying for the d-link (after logging in to AM to see price).
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
A couple of reasons - you could power the switch without additional wires, you are right next the the roborio ethernet port, so one length of cable can be very short, and it doesn’t take up any more room on the belly pan or frame. In short, putting the switch on the MXP is not needed, but it’s nice and tidy.
Exactly. Meet me on the corner with my Labview and NI dealers (Hey Foster, want a taste? FIRST snort is free, lets hook you up, we’ll be your regular dealers, hey !) Buy Labview and NI stuff on the street, FIRST has a very sweet deal.
$100 on a $5000 robot? Really? You’ll blow that on expedited Fed-Ex shipping (*) in week 4.
It’s a white box, buy three and deal with it. It’s October and you now now the footprint (aprox 2^pear’s across) ** is out in the open. Yay you.
For those that need 2^12 ports, let me direct you to the Cisco Product line, but I think weight may be a problem…
(*) Fed Ex is an amazing sponsor, no disrespect intended.
(**) Not good, next we will see the FRC field is 168 standard pears long. For years the world has gone with metric bananas for size and yet the Americans stick to the out dated pear.
The power over ethernet might be kinda neat. Might be possible to make a breakout plug so the radio and roborio can be powered from an offboard power source without a battery in the robot, being able to deploy code through battery swaps or power loss might be somewhat useful. Are there any other relevant PoE devices?
I wonder how much of an impact the firmware will have on teams.
Are we going to get these every year in the KOP. If so it looks like in a few years our robotics room is getting a fancy new router. 
Generally speaking, control system components are only given to all teams in the KOP when they change/are new. This is a change, therefore all teams get one. After the first round of that, they will (in general) only go to rookies in the KOP–though I wouldn’t find it inconceivable for them to crop up in FIRST Choice or for sale at AndyMark in addition to any other places they’d be sold commercially.
We ran one of these at IRI. I am pretty sure we did not need to rewire anything. We just pulled off the DLINK and put this one on.
-Steve
I believe veterans received routers in the KOP the past 2 years despite being the same model from 2013.
This router supports PoE, so in theory if later versions of the RoboRIO supported being able to inject power into the ethernet cables (or had a setting to do so in the webdash), you could save yourself the additional wiring and hassle of a power cable into the VRM altogether, another perk over the DLink router.
call me crazy but I feel like I saw a radio in the 2014 and 2015 KOP.
For all I know it could have been from First Choice. I started caring about robotics a lot more around the beginning of the build season last year.
I do remember convincing my mentor to put the Nvidia Quadro k4000 as the top pick on last years FChoice which wasnt hard since hes as big of a hardware geek as I am. Seriously though why was a $1,200 gpu only 200 points.