[FRC Blog] New Radios at 2024 FIRST Championship

FIRST General Forum
631

Pre-orders opening soon! However, there will be an extremely limited number available.

Folks have been asking about the status of the SSID with programmable suffix. We’ve completed testing on this, it’ll make its way into 1.2.0.

We’re working on an RF validation feature (requires one VH-109 placed in Team 6 GHz AP mode and one VH-109 placed into Robot Radio mode), allowing teams to determine whether their radio placement is acceptable for use.

Once this feature is completed, we’ll release to the public in the coming week.

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632

I know this is going to be a hard to answer question with no forecasting data, but should we have credit cards ready to go as soon as its live, or do you think we are safe with a PO if its within 2-3 days of it going live?

633

One recommendation is if the 113’s are going to be limited, don’t make it the top option on the Practicing At Home page in the docs. That’s going to push more teams to wanting to buy them to use them like that. Unless they’re only limited for a limited amount of time, and full stock will be available by the season.

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634

Do you have a progress update on having Cheesy Arena work with any managed network switch?
I have been looking at the network switch that 254 suggests on their documentation, but we aren’t able to order stuff from eBay, so if we can just use a generic managed network switch from Amazon, that would be amazing!

635

I remember perhaps firmware to make your VH-109 into a VH-113 (abet with lower duty cycle due to heat), was on track to be released in July 24’?

Is this still a thing considering the limited availability prediction of VH-113 hardware?

Is it as simple as loading VH-113 firmware up on VH-109 hardware once 113’s are released/launched?

636

Is there a recommended heat sink to use with a VH-109 when using it as an AP

637

You can also find compatible used switches on Amazon.

Here’s a Cisco 3560G for example.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WXJY57M

638

Appreciate it, but that is more expensive than eBay.
I’ll add it to our orderlist, but I’m just gonna keep my fingers crossed for Cheesy Arena to work on any network switch.

639

Careful. There are a lot of counterfeit switches floating around on Amazon and eBay. See link below – that’s not the only guy doing this.

640

So I’m wondering if anyone that has the new radio has to tried to set it up for “home” use, by using a Wi-Fi 6E, Tri-Band Router($150) configured as an AP. Since I don’t have either (yet) I was wondering if the following is possible.

My thinking is since my AP can support 2.4ghz, 5ghz and 6ghz devices simultaneously, that any device in any band of the bands in my shop should be able to connect to the radio on the robot via the Tri-Band 6E AP.

It seems theoretically possible.

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641

ive tried it with an om5p and it worked, but the configuration on the non-robot end was a little weird. (had to add some static paths and some NAT rules but it might be because the setup allowed outbound internet access for robot wifi) might have the same situation with the vh radio

642

reminds me of a question i had but forgot cuz i couldnt post. @kiettyyyy (sorry @) will it be possible to connect the VH-113 ap to a network with internet access, to allow devices on the robots network (when using the VH-113 + VH-109 shop setup) to access internet? like a WAN interface

643

Yes this is possible, the VH-109 in client mode can connect to any 6GHz Access Point.

644

There is nothing preventing you from doing this, though you will need to manually define the default gateway that routes to the internet.

But I cannot stress enough that connecting the robot network to the internet is a generally bad idea. I would instead recommend you wire a laptop with Ethernet to the VH-113 and also connect the laptop wirelessly to an Internet enabled WiFi network.

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645

can you elaborate? outbound-only FW should be safe, especially considering that everything is designed to run (and does) in an environment without internet ever

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646

@R.C Any chance the Radio page can be updated to have both the vivid hosting part numbers and the WCP part numbers? That way if someone searches VH-117 they’ll actually get to that page?

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647

The search engine on the site should now pick up those p/n’s and fwd to the correct page.

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648

Have you done this? I’m attempting it with a VH-109 now, and it’s not working. The VH-109 does connect to my AP (Ubqiuiti gear), but it’s not actually handling traffic properly.

The VH-109 just keeps sending ARP requests for the router (10.TE.AM.4), and the router replies with the proper ARP response, but the VH-109 just keeps asking over and over and over.

So to be clear:

  • I have a Ubqiuti AP with an SSID matching my team number on 6GHz.
  • I have my network side configured to have a router/gateway IP of 10.TE.AM.4.
  • The VH-109 is connected to it, and shows up as a client in the Ubiquiti Network console
  • I have a laptop plugged into the Rio port on the VH-109, configured with 10.TE.AM.2

Results:

  • The laptop can ping the VH-109 @ 10.TE.AM.1, but not the router at 10.TE.AM.4.
  • A driver station connected to the same Ubiquiti network can not ping either the VH-109 @ 10.TE.AM.1 nor the “rio”(laptop) at 10.TE.AM.2.

The continual ARP request/response seems to indicate that the VH-109 is not happy.

649

What is the DHCP configuration for that VLAN?

650

I tried with DHCP giving out addresses from .100-.200, and then tried no DHCP at all - same results.

In my network packet dumps from the UniFi AP, there was no DHCP traffic though.