Arthur C. Clarke memorably wrote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. This is especially true when it breaks. We have robots that can talk perfectly, for hours and hours on a network. Then we bring them and their network into the Hull Makerspace and they break. Not completely, or reliably, but enough to make Robot Rugby an impossibility.

We had some long and earnest discissions this evening. Test code was written. Brute force algorithms were created to force hardware resets on recalcitrant robots. No dice. The only thing that seemed to work was moving the network device further away from the robot itself.

Magic. Just the wrong kind. But it is not going to beat me. I will win. If I have to write my own MQTT client to do it…..

Mind you, dinner was nice. The next meetup will be on the 15th of October.