2 Wireless Thymios that connect to both USB-Dongles

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Summary:

In our collection of 13 Thymios there are 2 that can't be used at the same time in the same room.

2 Wireless Thymios that connect to both USB-Dongles

Kinet 18 Nov 2016 10:24

We bought 12 wireless thymios and already had one thymio that we upgraded to be wireless-ready. This thymio (let's call it ThymioA with DongleA) cannot be used at the same time as one of the other 12 thymios (let's call it ThymioB with DongleB).

If DongleA is connected, then both ThymioA and ThymioB connect to this dongle.
If DongleB is connected, then both ThymioA and ThymioB connect to this dongle.
In both cases the VPL shows the error message: "This application only supports a single robot at a time."

The Wireless Thymio Network Configurator shows:
DongleA node identifier: 0xD396
DongleB node identifier: 0xCF96
Both use channel 1 and network id 0x404F (as all the other 11 thymios as well).

We've tried to renew the pairing and to flash it into the dongles, but that doesn't help. Which seems reasonable, as both thymios work ok independently, but not when used at the same time in the same room.

Changing the network id or the channel helps, but as soon as we put them back into the same channel and network, they don't work together.

Anything we can do?

Regards,
Tom

Re: 2 Wireless Thymios that connect to both USB-Dongles

cbarraud 22 Nov 2016 07:40

Hi Tom,

This is in fact how Wireless Thymio works. By default, all Wireless Thymio have the same channel and network ID. The node ID is related to the robot (some sort of MAC address) do not change that.

So by default, all Wireless Thymio are on the same network. It means that a "default" dongle will connect to all "default" robots in range. That allows to do some pretty neat stuff with a network of robot (for example https://www.thymio.org/fr:thymioremotecontrol)

But you can pair a dongle to a robot (and thus have your 12 robots controlled individually by the 12 dongles). For this, you should use the Wireless network configurator and choose a network ID different for every robot (the value you choose is arbitrary). For example, just use 0x1, 0x2, 0x3… until 0x12. I also advice you to spread the robot along the three channels (0, 1, 2) to avoid overloading the network.

You probably already found it but here is the page that explains this point: https://www.thymio.org/en:thymiosettingwireless

Does this help? Don't hesitate to ask if anything is not clear yet!

Christophe