Throughout our 2019 season, our 2 cameras for sandstorm were laggy, the quality wasnt all that great. Somehow, it became comparable to a LL feed when i messed around the robot today. I didnt do anything in code except for increasing robot speed. The only other thing i did was swapped the radio. We initially had 2 radios configured for the 2019 season and only ever used one. For some reason, i just decided to swap to our back up, and the camera feeds were amazing.
Explanation?
You may have been running into bandwidth limits. Depending on how you configured your radios, they may or may not be enforcing it: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/getting-started/getting-started-frc-control-system/radio-programming.html#select-options
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Who enforcing what?
The venue enforcing a set bandwidth?
From the linked documentation:
BW Limit: If this box is checked, the radio enforces a 4MB/s bandwidth limit like it does when programmed at events.
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If im understanding correctly, our comp radio has the limit but the backup probably didnt which is why the cameras were able to be great?
Bandwidth limiting happens at the robot radio. That’s part of what gets flashed to the radio at competition.
Yep. All competition radios will have a bandwidth limit. When you flash the radio at home, you have an option whether or not you want to enforce that bandwidth limit. That option probably wasn’t selected on the backup radio.
I will check tomorrow and let you know- is there an easy way of checking the configuration? I think i read on WPILib that 2019 radios can be used for 2020 since they are on the same [firmware]
Yup. You read that here: https://docs.wpilib.org/en/latest/docs/getting-started/getting-started-frc-control-system/radio-programming.html#open-mesh-firmware-note
just checked. The feed is smooth on BOTH radios now.
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Did you happen to image your rio or import your 2019 code into the 2020 vscode?
uh… i just reloaded the firmware onto the radio. I didnt do anything with writing/transferring code yet.
It says the same firmware is used, but says it still needs to be configured with the 2020 tool.
Did you have the bandwidth limiter checkbox checked when you flashed the radio for home use? You might want to flash again and make sure that is checked to validate that you are really getting the smooth feed under field conditions.
Robot radios can sense anger. Since it’s not close to the competition, they tend to work better.
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I did check the BW limit on the backup. The competition radio was not flashed for 2020, I’m not planning on using it.
Watch an FTA sometime at a competition. Robots will refuse to connect to the field for minutes at a time just waiting one of us to step on the field toward it, then it’ll suddenly connect to tick us off.
I’ve even used that to my advantage when there were 2 of us working a Regional. I was at the bot with a team member having her do this and that to try to coax it to connect. Finally I just got on the radio and asked the other FTA to start walking toward us. As soon as his foot hit the carpet past the gate, robot went green. Got on the radio again and said, Thank You," and he turned around and went back to what he was doing. She looked at me like I just did the best magic trick she had ever seen and we went to make sure the DS was showing video. The way she told her team what had happened made me wish I had a Gandalf or Sorting hat hidden somewhere around the field.
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