One issue we faced often last semester was that the ports for the ethernet cable we used for our tether were corroding. Additionally, we used a PoE switch to power the cameras on the robot, but this would get very hot very fast, so we wanted to switch to another method to power the cameras.
We decided that the best course of action for the tether was to switch to a fiber optic cable. This enabled us to create a designated port with a corrosion-resistant interface, instead of using a metal ethernet port. Unfortunately, the cable itself has not arrived yet, but we were able to add a new ethernet switch with a port for the fiber optic cable.
Now that the cable has arrived, we were able to attach it to the robot. In order to avoid any chance that we run out, we ordered a 100 m fiber optic cable. Overkill is not in our vocabulary. The new ethernet switch also does not deliver Power over Ethernet, so we used PoE injectors to power the onboard cameras.
