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How long to get through the benchtop tests

Just trying to get an idea of how long it took some of the team to get through this set of tests.

Thanks!

Darrell

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I'm on a beta team, so I'd seen the hardware before, but when our Pre-Ship controller came, I had 4 of our kids build up the bench test mostly by them reading the instructions.

Starting with a clean slate it took about 4 hours to assemble the bench test setup and get it running "tethered".

It took another hour to get the wireless configured correctly.

Note: as lame as it may seem, you need to follow the Wireless setup EXACTLY as it's documented.

The changes in network IP etc must be done in the correct order for an easy setup.

We missed one simple step (of connecting a specific cable) and it took us much longer than it should have because we had to backtrack.

Get a life? This IS my life!
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Also as a beta team, it took 4 hours through setting up wireless. I spoke to one of the other local teams, and it took them 7 hours.

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Philbot said:

"We missed one simple step (of connecting a specific cable)"

Do you mean that you forgot to connect a cable at all

-or-

do you mean that you did connect it, but it was the wrong cable and you had to get a specific one.

If the second is the case, which step was this and what type of cable did you have to use?

Question:

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to make it go faster, besides trying to rush through it as fast as possible and not learning enough information? Thanks!

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When we wentto the wireles configuration, we disconneded the cable between the robot and driver station.

Unfortunately it was still needed to change the settings of the robot's wireless bridge.

As for reducing the time to test... Once you've run the tank drive test... it's kinda redundant to then test the arcade drive and auto mode.

The Tank drive test exercises all the same features, so we'll be moving onto wireless communication and then software updates.

Once we've done the updates, we'll just test the default code once, before moving on to customization.

I will stress that doing these tests gives you experience with the various components, so I wouldn't be too eager to speed them up.

Phil.

Get a life? This IS my life!
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We did our reading ahead of time and were able to get the testbed working tethered in about 1.5 hours. We are running into a slight problem with the wireless, but expect it to get it knocked out this afternoon.

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We did ours in 3 sessions of 2 hours each.  Mind you the first session we spent just organising the items, screwing them to some plywood and wiring them up.  We found the configuration went best if you leave all the items plugged into the router until you are done.  Each item will eventually get your team IP instead of the default 10.0.0.x.

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It took us about 6 hours to set up.  Laying out the various pieces took some time.  Following the directions is important.  Also had a problem with the wireless connection between the router and the robot controller.  Don't expect it to initialize immediately.  It took about 5 minutes.  At first thought we did something wrong so reset both the router and robot controller and did it all over.

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