In this diagram it shows a laptop and a driver station going to a network switch. Do you need to have the switch or can you just plug it right into the radio?
No, but itâs good practice to have 2 separate laptops, 1 for programming and 1 for driver station. But if you have everything on 1 laptop, you donât need the switch, you can plug the radio to that laptop
7 Likes
thank you man 
This is just a general networking thing, but an unmanaged switch (most common kind) acts like a power strip for your Ethernet data (ignoring POE for now). It lets you connect more than 1 Ethernet cord at a time to a single end port (radio). If you donât need the extra ports you donât actually need the switch like @TFM110 pointed out.
This is true at home with your regular internet Router as well. If you have lots of Ethernet devices hardwired (most routers Iâve seen for home use have 1 or 2 ports at most) will mean buying a switch just to get the extra ports. The only place this âpower stripâ analogy breaks down is you have to be aware of what bandwidth it can handle.
The cheapest switches offer the lowest data transfer speed of (10/100 Mbps) this is usually enough bandwidth for a single robot at home. Iâm guessing the real FMS bumps up to Gigabit switches (10/100/1000 Mbps) to handle the increased bandwidth needed.
1 Like
Kind of an unrelated question to OP here, but I also have a quick question about using the VH-109 as an AP. We didnât order a VH-117 to power the AP radio, and I spent about an hour today updating the firmware on our new radios and configuring them to be an AP and a robot radio, but didnât get enough time to sort out how to power the AP. Would it be possible to just plug a PoE injector into a wall socket and run an ethernet cable out of the PoE end into the radio? If not, is there another way to power the VH-109 without the VH-117?
The VH-117 just converts 120AC from the wall to 12VDC the radio needs.
You can power the AP configured radio via the weidmuller connectors, just need a 12VDC âwall wartâ that you strip the ends on and insert according to the correct polarity (ideally with an in-line fuse, say 3A just in case).
Or you can use that same AC-DC converter making 12V and run that into something like REVâs Passive POE Injector (or whatever flavor you may have like from adafruit) - and use the ethernet cable to carry power to the RIO port of the AP configured radio.
I have had success also plugging my laptop into the injector to have 1 RJ-45 ethernet cable running to the AP, although the RIO port is limited to 10/100 speeds whereas the driverstation port is gigabit and where you would plug a computer into directly typically.
3 Likes
We have had success connecting the driver station via Ethernet direction to the (non-robot) VH-109 AP, and connecting the programming laptop to the VH-109 AP via 6 GHz WiFi 6E (just like the robotâs VH-109).
are you using a WIFI 5 dongle on your laptop, and if so can you share a URL to the dongle. if you did not use a dongle, can you share the wifi adapater information for the network adapter? iâve only seen posts saying that people have been unable to to connect to the VH-109 AP with a laptop 6E wifi adapter.
We were able to connect the programming laptop to the VH-109 AP with this dongle: Amazon.com: TP-Link WiFi 6E USB Adapter for Desktop PC - (Archer TXE50UH) AXE3000 Tri-Band Wireless Network Adapter, Ultra-Low Latency, MU-MIMO, OFDMA, Refined Security, WPA3, Supports Windows 11/10 : Electronics
As a bonus, this leaves the built-in radio free to connect to the Internet over another WiFi network, which can be helpful for looking up WPILib docs, etc., without needing to toggle between networks.
We also got a laptop with WiFi 6E built-in now, but havenât yet attempted to connect it to the VH-109.
thank you for the info. several years ago our team purchased wifi 5 dongles for all the laptops so we could do exactly what youâre doing. the biggest benefit for us was begin able to use VS code live share while connected to the robot. could have multiple students and mentors looking at the same code being edited live.
bill