Team 782, The Kilowatts from Watkinson School will be providing a new service for this year. We will be providing a high speed wireless IP network for the duration of the event. This network will not provide internet access to the event, just intranet capability including:
HTTP (Apache) with a News and Information Page, Common Downloads, a Camera Interface Page, and a YaBB Forum
IRC Server with JAVA Applets on the Webpage
Multiple camera views of the event.
We will be using 802.11b, WiFi to provide coverage, there will be high gain wireless antenna and repeaters installed to provide a good coverage area (most of the pits and arena). More information will be available at the project’s website at http://www.jttechnology.com/kilowattnet
Read up about it there, I hope you all plan to use our network. We worked very hard in planning and hope it will be useful. Bring your wireless cards!
Why is it that FIRST is not allowing internet connectivity to teams at any of the FIRST events?? This seems like a pretty random rule to me. Perhaps it is like the olympics and they don’t want results leaking?? Or perhaps they are just worried that computer geeks will be on IM all day instead of walking around and being graciously professional?? Either way I’m a little preplexed but I’m sure FIRST has their reasons which I would be curious to understand.
I would also think of the reason that they don’t want teams spending excessive amounts of cash to get that kind of bandwidth to an event. A T1, ISDN Line, or DSL Line can be expensive, and I think that money should go towards the robot or team.
Kilowattnet will not provide internet access for two reason, because FIRST said I could not, and because our team cannot afford the costs of a highspeed wired connection or a highspeed wireless connection.