Hi! Our team has gone through to the Inspection Checklist and we didn’t understand this one:
Verify Team Number on DS – team has programmed the OpenMesh Wireless Bridge at kiosk for this event.
This is our rookie year, so we haven’t gone through inspection before. I don’t know how fulfill the above requirement.
Please help.
Thank you,
Stephen.
The radio that you will use on the competition field needs to be brought over to a table near pit admin and have competition configuration firmware and settings flashed. Super easy, don’t need to bring anything other than your radio.
Thank you so much!
It also means that, while at the competition, you will not be able to connect wirelessly to your robot except on the field.
So, be prepared to tether to your robot while in the pits to operate it.
Practice this at home. The more complicated your robot network, the more you have to understand the network interactions.
That can be via:
One more quick bit of advice for this - the kiosk line can get long, especially as Thursday rolls on. If you have a free student, being able to dedicate someone to stand in line with the radio while the rest of the robot is repaired and fixed up for competition is ideal. Even more-so, if you can spare someone to go get it done as early as possible.
The process for us seems to go fine some years, but other years takes a really long time and fails randomly. It does require a specific sequence of ethernet cable plug/unplug, and power plug/unplug. Follow the instructions on screen carefully to minimize the time you spend flashing.
But, all that being said - event staff are super helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask for help if needed. It’s something every team has to do, and there’s no special team-specific tricks - either it’ll go smooth for pretty much everyone, or everyone will have issues. So, even though it might be a bit nerve-wracking, especially if you’re under time constraints, try not to worry to much, you aren’t doing it alone!
Just to help clarify - 8714 is in the FMA district, so load-in, inspection and practice happen on Friday evening. 
(The rest of your post is completely spot-on, I just don’t want to confuse a rookie student!)
See you at Bridgewater - MidKnight will be happy to help with anything you need, as are so many of the friendly FMA teams!
You can ensure your radio has the right firmware ahead of time, but I wouldn’t worry about it. You do have to configure the radio at the event. If everyone had the right firmware, it would save a little time. However, the firmware often gets redone unnecessarily, because of the process flow and quirks of the radio, etc. Hopefully, someone at the event will have things running smoothly – it’s a bit of a black art, but it is possible to have this work smoothly in most cases. This is on the volunteers, so you needn’t worry over it. At times, it does go slowly though.
Yes! Excellent catch, thank you!
This may sound redundant. Make sure your radio is easily accessible, easily removed and easily re-attached. I’ve seen teams get a nasty surprise when they find they have to drill out rivets or something like that to be able to get the radio out.
Some more unsolicited advice…
If you are lucky enough to own multiple radios, bring more than one. At times, a radio can get finicky and not take the FMS programming. After you get one programmed for the event, Mark it.
The same issue can happen when you get home.
When you get home, keep the spare programmed in bridged mode and swap them out as your event radio and your practice radio.
This way you will have both setup reliably. Of course you cannot use the bridge mode radio at an event unless it is reprogrammed (keep bringing it just in case).
I have also seen many radios secured with a large zip tie. On some of them, the zip tie had been tightened, the case of the radio is visibly distorted. It is possible that damages the circuit board inside. If the radio is sliding around with the zip tie around it, attach it with Velcro or 3M Duo Lock then wrap the zip tie around it.
OM5P-AC Radio Modification — FIRST Robotics Competition documentation has some pictures and recommendations for one of the common “squished” failure modes. I don’t think we have ever opened one up to do this so it’s probably not required… But something to consider
Can you please expand on this? We have several radios, and we are able to configure them, but we can’t get the new firmware to load on any of them.
Is this something that can be done at the competition? Or should we try to figure it out ahead of time?
The fact that you can configure the radios means they have the correct firmware on them, which hasn’t changed since 2019.
As to your other question, the radio kiosk at the event will also update the firmware.
Thanks! I’ve never had to deal with the programming end of things before, but this year we don’t have anyone else helping out with that stuff.
The FRC firmware is a prerequisite for the configuration, but is a separate step. Both will be done at competition, but you should be able to do both at home also. However, this is a frequent pain point. There are several threads here discussing the particulars, but I’d start by carefully following:
This includes the troubleshooting section, towards the end. In particular, the one thing that I’ve personally found necessary to change on the PC used in these procedures is to update “Npcap”. A lot of it is down to timing as well.
Note that not allowing enough time for the radio to boot up before starting the config process often leads to unnecessarily starting down the path of updating the firmware. So, allowing a couple of minutes after plugging everything in and before attempting to update the config can save some trouble. At least if you are prompted to update the firmware after doing this, it’s likely to be needed. This is why it can speed things up at events to use two power adapters – one for the radio being configured, and one for the next-in-line.
As Philso mentioned above, do not use zip ties for the radio. By compressing the radio yu might force the contacts that extend under the circuit board to contact the metal shield weight at the bottom of the radio. Often this results in shorting one or more of the Ethernet connections or POE to common. I suggest grabbing some Scotchlock or heavy duty velcro to mount the radio. Also make sure it is above the base and away from mechanical systems like motors. This allows best connection with the field and least amount of interference.
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