I am the lead mentor for a rookie FTC team. Tomorrow we are hoping to drive our robot for the first time and I am confused about how the Field Control System works. The FTC Field Control system manual refers to a wireless router. Here is my question: Does our laptop act as a router when it has downloaded the Field Control System software or do we need to buy a wireless router? Also, if anyone wishes to include a short explanation of how the field controls system interacts with the Samantha wireless unit I would appreciate. I am looking over the Field Control System manual and i am confused. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help tomorrow be productive. I am worried that we will spend our entire 3 hours trying to get the wireless to work. My students could really use the morale boost that comes from seeing the robot work.
Others will post with more info but you need to set up a network either via a router or ad hoc on the laptop. The samantha is a wireless access point so to speak and you must connect it to your network. There is a protocol that uses a USB drive and cycling the Samantha that flashes the network config file. The sequence uses the red white blue LEDs on the Samantha to show progress.
The Samantha is just a pass through device in the eyes of the user. One could consider it to be a USB over wifi type connection. Google, Bing on the terms Samantha FTC and you’ll reach John Toebes pages on the development of this device by Cisco.
Be sure to check out the FTC forums…there is a whole thread of Samantha posts that might help you out: