🗜️Mounting Options
Overview
There are two recommended methods to mount your radio.
Zip Ties
The radio housing has two notches on either side. These notches are sized to fit a 1/4" wide zip tie (McMaster-Carr P/N 70215K57). When zip ties can be run through these notches and around a part of your robot's structure to rigidly mount the radio to the robot.
Removing the radio is easy, just cut the zip ties and unplug the cables.
VHB Tape
Another recommended solution is to use VHB tape. This is a high strength foam tape that can create a rigid mechanical connection between your robot and the radio.
Here are some examples of recommended VHB tape:
0.045" x 0.500"
0.045" x 1"
0.045" x 2"
It's possible to remove the radio when using VHB, but keep in mind that VHB creates a more permanent bond than zip ties. Removing a radio mounted with VHB will require some force. Be careful not to damage your radio in the process of removing it.
Zip tie notches are included in the event that teams opt out of using VHB or another adhesive to attach the radio to their robots.
Custom Mount
Teams are more than welcome to design their own mounting solutions for the radio. However, there are some important considerations teams should make:
Do Not Fully Enclose The Radio
Creating a mount that encases the radio in a 3D printed or plastic housing traps heat. This can cause the radio to overheat during a match, which will cause the radio latency to increase.
What is Latency?
Latency is the amount of time is takes for packets of data to travel from one device to another. In the case of the VH-109 radio, it's the amount of time it takes for packets of data to travel from your driver station to the robot.
In other words, the higher the latency is the more delayed your controls will be. Normally this doesn't become noticeable to a driver until latency reaches around 120ms.
Under normal operating conditions, the latency between the radio and the driver station is no more than 5ms. When the radio gets hot, this latency will increase to around 40ms. While this is still well under the 120ms mentioned above, your radio will not be operating at peak performance.
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