We’ve recently acquired 2 VH-109 radios to migrate over test out before the upcoming season. However we have not found a way to make them work reliably enough to reasonably switch to using them for testing at our build space.
As shown in the video here, the radio is connected with “Excellent” rated signal, until we have someone walk between the robot and radio at which point it quickly disconnects.
It seems like we must be doing something very wrong, because the previous radio works just fine in these conditions. Anyone have ideas what to change? Has anyone else observed this behavior?
The new 6 GHz signals of the new radio just kind of do that. This was even noticed during initial testing on a real field. The solution was to mount the field radio on a stand above the heads of all field personnel. Home users should likely be doing something similar (or just not walking between the robot and field radio).
Ok, that’s pretty unfortunate, it seems like this is a pretty big limitation.
We can try to mount above head level and see how it goes, but if there’s still disconnections it doesn’t seem viable to not walk in front of the robot (i.e changing the battery, someone walking across the lab, etc).
Probably will just end up using the old radios for testing and swap on the new ones for competition.
Glad to know were not the only ones whove expirenced this. People looked at me like I grew an extra head when i told them they cant interrupt LOS with the new radios.
Unfortunately 6ghz is gonna 6ghz, so poor penetrative performance is expected.
Hmm, interesting.
I’ve done a similar system like this and it works perfectly. (We move around the radio and sometimes block the direct line between the radio and the robot and it works just fine).
The system that we did is:
1 VH-109 programmed as VH-113
1 VH-109 programmed as VH-109
1 Switch
1 laptop connected to a switch
1 DS
In addition, we use the 2 VH-109 radios programmed to VH-109 95% of the time (just because it is faster to load the initial time and you don’t need an additional laptop to the switch). On this system, we are placing the radio (that’s configured to be a Robot Access Point) facing to the ceiling placed on the DS table.
We never had any disconnections when we were using it.
I have some questions about your system:
What firmware have you uploaded to each radio?
We always connect the radio (that’s AP) to the “DS” port (in the video it seems that the ethernet cable is connected to “Rio”). Can you try it and see if it helps? (I don’t really know if it matters)
Are the radios hot? Do you cool them somehow? Do you have something like WCP’s Radio Heatsink?
can you please send a screenshot of the webpage when you open? (it will give a lot of information about the configs of the radio):
10.XX.YY.4/status
Do the same as 4 to the Robot Radio with this address:
10.XX.YY.1/status
If the low object penitration of the 6ghz signal is too much of an issue why not just switch to the 2.4ghz signal for home use, that way you dont have to swap radios between home and comp.
Definitely sounds like a huge problem but it isn’t the end of the world. There are definitely adjustments/fixes that can be made before they are used again, or game rules involving more active human players are halted, which is the less preferable option. IMO this isn’t the worst thing to hear about these radios, but you’re absolutely right that this isn’t a fun reality for it either.
Just making sure I understand your system.
The system you are using is:
2 VH-109 radios with the EXACT same firmware but one is configured as Robot AP and one is configured as Robot Radio.
Right?
(by EXACT, I mean, the firmware is VH-109_1.2.6-11102024.FROM_1_2_X.img.enc OR VH-109_1.2.6-11102024.img.enc (based on your previous firmware))
We have purposely avoided this due to the numerous recommendations both on here and the vividhosting site about the unreliability of the connection, if we were going to do something nonstandard the old radios work just fine.
That’s certainly an option, but it has a couple of drawbacks. One is that the 2.4 GHz band can be quite congested. The other is that the 2.4 GHz band on the VH-109 fades out when the radio gets hot, which is likely to be a significant problem for a lengthy drive practice.