Other options:
Buy an old Thinkpad like this, and put a small SSD in it.
Use a USB2 to Ethernet adapter.
We had a very similar situation in our quarter finals match. The first one we exhibited similar behavior all throughout teleop (autonomous went fine). The second match we only dropped out for about 30 seconds or so. The DS logs showed that we lost communication with the FMS for the duration of those times. CSA’s suggested that this was caused by our radio losing power, but it looked like they couldn’t investigate the issue further than that.
I’m eager to see if you can resolve this, and I’ll see if I can make any progress on evidence for what caused our problem.
It sounds like the CSA was on to something - a radio reboot typically takes between 30 and 40 seconds to come back (the DS logs tell you exactly how long your robot was down). In contrast, a roboRIO will take around 25 seconds to reboot.
Common causes of radio reboots:
- Brownouts due to your battery being low. These events correlate to large current draws
- PDP Fuses. Push them in all the way
- Multiple things plugged into the radio source on the VRM
- The barrel connector not being plugging in all the way, especially if it’s an older one
Yeah we didn’t notice any unusually large voltage spikes in the logs but I’m still checking different possible causes.
Also make sure you are using the appropriately sized barrel connector. If the outer diameter is too small, intermittent power is possible.