How to avoid radio config hell at off-season events?

Technical Control System
1

Hi,

I ran a pre-bag scrimmage for 19 teams using FMS Light last Sunday. This was my 15th off-season event, so I’m getting pretty good at the overall logistics of running the field. But there’s one part of running an event that always causes trouble:

Robot Radio Configuration Hell

When teams are working at home, they configure their robot radios per the book guidelines. And this year, there’s even a configuration tool that makes it much easier. But if the team wants to participate in an off-season event using FMS Light, I find they run into these problems:

  1. They don’t know how to manually program their radio. This was a big enough problem before, but with the introduction of the auto-config tool, they’re totally insulated from learning anything about logging into the radio.
  2. They figure out how to login to the radio, but miss a critical step and need help troubleshooting, which frequently takes longer than if an expert just did it from scratch.
  3. They get their SSID changed to match the field, but leave their radio in AP mode (or put it back there during the event). This is a killer. A room full of APs with the same SSID means nobody can reliably connect to the field. This leads to endless frustration.

So what I’m wondering is: How do other off-season events handle this?

  • Do you have a designated radio programming station that all teams must visit before going on the field? One or two “experts” are responsible for getting all the configs correct?
  • Do you set the radio into bridge mode and put tape on it?
  • Has someone developed an auto-config tool similar to the one for working at home, but sets up the radio correctly for FMS Light?
  • Any other solutions?

Thanks,
Terry

2

We got this down perfect. We do about 40 events a year including wi-fi hellish places like CNN Center and large schools and campuses.

Forget AP mode, forget setting IP addresses, forget 2.4 GHz. That is the top three rules.

  1. go buy an N-Router and configure it just like you do for an FRC competition, but you don’t need FMS or FMS lite unless you want to do a full event demonstration.

  2. all driver stations are hardwired into the N-Router. NO WIRELESS.

  3. disable the wireless using the control panel on the driver station. ( this will also very much help out when running the FRC cRio format utility )

  4. configure the router / bridge pair to connect on 5 GHz ONLY. for example have the router have two different SSIDs. for example MYROUTER2 and MYROUTER5 for the two bands.

  5. configure the bridge to connect to MYROUTER5.

  6. in our shop where it is relatively wi-fi quiet a development pc can connect to MYROUTER2 ( if it isn’t 5 GHz capable ) and can push code into a robot, pc to router is 2.4 GHz, router to 5 GHz.

  7. let the DS setup screen configure the IP address for you.

benefits
reliable communication
essentially identical to FRC field operations, no retraining or reconfiguration.
no reconfiguration of bridges, pc, or routers
better performance when formatting cRios with crossover cable from DS to cRio

It’s awesome.

3

We also recently hosted a pre-ship scrimmage on Sunday and had nothing but trouble.

Some findings:
(1) Changing the configuration of the radio doesn’t take.
We found that just changing the configuration of the radio, like ssid and encryption was not enough. The only thing that worked was resetting the radio to factory defaults and setting the new configuration.

(2) Team radios misconfigured.
Even though we had a team member go to each team’s pit, we didn’t make a list of all teams and inspect and set each team’s radio. When team’s came to the field, a number of teams radio’s were still wrong or set in AP mode.

(3) The new radios for this year have issues.
(3.a) This may be more of an issue for off-season configuration. In the scrimmage mode, we run with the radio in BRIDGE mode connecting to a single SSID to the field AP. We suspect that FIRST runs the competition with the radio in AP mode, we couldn’t remember from last year and this year’s configuration might change. We identified one radio that even though the switch was set to BRIDGE mode the radio was still operating in AP mode. This operation would disrupt the entire field.

(3.b) Another of the new radios when reset went into emergency web server mode, requiring the firmware to be downloaded. I couldn’t find the new firmware on the FIRST KOP website, but another Team’s mentor had a copy.

4

There are three distinct radio configurations needed by teams:

  1. At home
  2. Off-season event with FMS Light
  3. Regular event with Full FMS

For the most part, the configuration stays the same. Once the DS and cRio are configured at home, they should not change at all. The robot radio should get the team’s IP address and never change (10.xx.yy.1).

The only things that needs to be changed for the different scenarios are three settings in the robot radio.

The robot radio differences are:

  1. At home - set to AP mode; SSID=team number; Security=off
  2. FMS Light - set to Bridge mode; SSID=field AP (provided by event host, e.g. “thefield”); Security=matching the field AP (could be enabled or disabled)
  3. Full FMS - set to Bridge mode; SSID=team number; Security=FMS provided WPA2 key

The explanation for these differences is as follows:

  1. At home - the DS laptop uses its internal WiFi radio to seek out an AP with the team number. It finds the robot radio and makes a direct connection.
  2. FMS Light - the field AP has a single common SSID, such as “thefield”. Each robot radio seeks out the field AP using the common name. The DS laptop is hard-wired into the field network and finds both FMS and its own robot on the network (via the field AP). The DS laptop’s internal WiFi radio is unused.
  3. Full FMS - the field AP is re-programmed by FMS for each match. It creates 6 private SSIDs that match the team numbers listed for the current match. The robot radio seeks out the SSID matching its team number and connects to it. The DS laptop is hard-wired into the field network and finds both FMS and its own robot on the network (via the field AP). The DS laptop’s internal WiFi radio is unused.

The at-home and Full FMS scenarios are relatively trouble free. A mis-configuration only affects a single bot.

The FMS Light scenario is open to larger trouble. The biggest problem is when a team switches their robot’s SSID to match the field, but leaves the radio in AP mode. This creates confusion on the field since multiple APs now exist with the same name. The problem robot could still be in the pits, but if the pits are in the same area as the field, then another robot that is correctly configured can just as easily connect to the problem robot as to the real field. The result is the correctly configured robot doesn’t appear on the field network, cannot talk to its DS, and prevents the match from starting until the connection gets fixed, usually by rebooting the radio and hoping for a connection to the real field. It only takes a single mis-configured bot to impact field operations.

So what I’m looking for is a “best practice” of how to get teams’ robot radios configured correctly with minimal hassle.

I’ve tried handing out slips of paper to teams with programming instructions and the expectation they can do it themselves, but that seems to leave the door wide open for problems.

I’m not aware of an auto-config tool (like is available for at-home and Full FMS operation). I’m exploring channels at FIRST to get one, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m thinking that the best solution may be to have a “kiosk” near inspection where all radios must be programmed by an expert that I provide. But this creates a requirement for a skilled volunteer to staff the position at least until all bots have been programmed, which could take a while.

Are there any other possibilities I’m missing?

Thanks,
Terry

5

At an FMS-Lite off-season, I usually enlist several known and trusted network competent team mentors to make the rounds of the pits programming the individual team DLinks. Colored tape is placed over the Bridge/AP switch, so field/pit crew can see at a glance that the DLink has been configured or not.
They also instruct the teams on the importance of maintaining the Bridge setting, as well as how to reset the DLink for home use again after the event.

I also keep InSSIDer running to spot pop-up conflicts for the field AP, and I pick channels (e.g., 11) on the field AP to make it more obvious.

6

Great suggestion. I’ve added this one to my go-kit.

Terry

7

For our BunnyBots pre-season competition in Portland and outreach events where there are a bunch of robots we just tell every team they need to run in the 5Ghz band either from a laptop with that built in or through a USB network adapter. That means if it works in the shop it will work at the event. BunnyBots has around 24 teams all running at the same time with no issues to speak of.

All this works because BunnyBots doesn’t have a central field control system.

8

Quite true. Your scenario is basically a version of “at home”. There just happen to be 24 robots running “at home” in the same room.

I suspect you have to signal the teams some way to manually start autonomous, switch to teleop, then to stop. Do you have any safety or fairness issues with that?

Terry

9

Do you have any safety or fairness issues with that?

We’ve not had a problem with autonomous in BunnyBots. We just tell people to start their autonomous via their drivers stations when they hear the game sound (“charge”). It’s better than the alternative for BunnyBots because we have our own scoring system. Trying to integrate FMS Lite at the same time would just be too much technology. A side benefit is the rounds go really quickly because robots connect while in queue to their computers so when they hit the field they are ready to play.