Losing Robot Comms over WiFi

[dooodsdare]

Let’s try this again:

If we control the robot via USB or Ethernet directly into the bridge, we have no problems; the robot stays connected to the laptop just fine. When we connect via WiFi, we drop comms every five to ten seconds. The driver station shows that it is indeed the bridge that is dropping connection. We have also had problems flashing firmware to our bridges, but after reading some, I believe this issue has been resolved (these might be to separate problems but I thought I should add it just in case). Has anyone else expereinced this issue or have ideas on how to fix it?

Flashing tool version: 20.0.0

[Joe_Ross]

Autodesk software has been known to cause periodic communication issues with the robot. Also, some wifi drivers may do that while scanning for new networks. I would recommend uninstalling any autodesk software and updating wifi drivers.

Does this only occur on one computer or on all computers?

[dooodsdare]

Latest versions of network adapters and windows were installed and it did not solve the issue.

Autodesk software was on the laptop and I have now uninstalled it all (not tested yet if this is a solution). We have not yet tested on a different laptop, but will be our next test. I will check this in the morning and post results here.

[MrRoboSteve]

Many teams have a dedicated laptop, so that they can have a minimum software install. See paper: Driver Station Best Practices for good info on driver stations.

[dooodsdare]

Autodesk was the culprit, thanks for your help!

@MrRoboSteve the laptop was dedicated until over the summer when we were in a pinch to have Inventor on the laptop and just never uninstalled it. Whoops! Thanks for the doc, we will look through it so see if there are any other things we can do to better our driver station.