I may purchase these keys just for my own hobbyist purposes and mess around with them.
Team-wise, I am almost certain that we’ll wait until everything is fleshed out with these new keys before buying any. Meaning, it’ll be next year.
That said, wonder just how different these are.
All,
James Pearman has the right idea. These commercial Wifi keys went obsolete 2 years ago. We bought enough to last us 2 years, based on our forecasted projected sales, and have been developing the new solution since that time.
Please understand, we were left with only two choices: (1) find another USB based Wifi radio or (2) develop our own.
We decided on #2 for many technical reasons that is not appropriate to get into on this forum. I can tell you this: we chose this solutions because we are confident it will be better for our customers.
Yes, we think it is better. How much better? Only time in real competition environments will tell.
TI was crucial to this development. VEX Engineers worked side by side with TI engineers to develop and test this radio. Without their support this new radio would not have been possible.
To those of you that need to be sold on the new key I don’t really have anything to sell you on. The new key is replacing the old one. If you don’t want it, then you don’t have to use it.
As for a trade in program, we will definitely be doing something and will have information out soon.
Paul
^^
Just wanted to say that this is one of the things I love about VEX. If the community has questions, headquarters does their best to answer the questions, unlike some companies who just change stuff and don’t explain why or care if people ask questions.
I realize this isn’t the most on-topic post of all time, but I thought I’d say it anyway. 
//Andrew
I really hope that these keys are more durable than the last generation. With the last generation you had to order 25% more keys than you needed, because usually 20% were broken by the time you received them.
I like the honest answer Paul, I really do. Thank you, we don’t get to see that much, all things considered.
I just hope the technology can support more robots with less interference while drawing less power, all while remaining sufficiently secure. Honestly any of those factors would be a big win and would go a long way towards “selling” me and others for that matter.
-Cody
Ricky,
When can we order them? Can we order some today so that they are shipped as soon as they are available?
If so, supply the part number or provide a link.
Thanks for the continuous improvement in this area - it clearly needs improvement and it is nice to hear that TI is willing to work with you.
Keep up the good work.
When in January will the Vexnets 2.0 become available? The older Vexnets are out of stock and we would like to order a pair of the new ones. Also, can you release more information on them; specifically, what improvements have been made?
Thanks,
Team 5854
Pretty sure this is really the only difference:
I can’t wait to get my hands on these! Hopefully no more disconnects 
Seems to me like the vast majority of disconnects are due to a shoddy connection. You can often wiggle a key a tad and cause a disconnect. USB really isn’t designed for the kind of abuse these things take. I wish they used a more secure plug.
Yea, that happens too; a different plug would really help. However, disconnects often happen at large competitions due to the amount of cellular and wifi connection around.
I wish in the next version of cortex that they have a port for the key, and a second port for a USB programming cable, that way there would be less wear on the key’s port
I refuse to believe that’s a problem. Our high school campus has a live wifi network running all day long. They have 3 of them, actually, two private and one public. On top of that, we have 1500+ students with cellular phones with a 3G connection running all day long. We run 30+ laptops and multiple speaker systems in the lab and its adjoining room on a daily basis, and not ONCE will we disconnect in testing. We’ll go to a competition, and everything will be fine on the practice field. Hook up to the Field Control system, and drop.
I’m about 70% sure it’s something to do with that system. Some of the Vexnet keys just don’t do well with it. Swap out to a good set and it’s fine. Our robot used keys 2 and 9 (we number ours to keep a log of problems) all yesterday without a problem. One of our teams tried all 5 of the ones not on our robots, and could not get a good pairing on field control. Off the field, they work perfectly. On field control (meaning they could only test during their matches), they would drop out after 40 seconds. When the hit finals, their alliance captain lent them a couple of keys. All the disconnects stopped.
Just our team’s experience. Anecdotal evidence is hardly proof of anything.
A common problem I have noticed in competitions are the connector tabs in both the VEXNet Joystick and the VEX Cortex themself. I noticed that when those tabs are abused as time goes on the VEXNet Keys are never inserted completely in either the Cortex or the Joystick. From my experience, this is where I’ve seen the most connection problems, even with new keys. I do wish we had a simple redesign of the Cortex flushing out some imperfections.
Here’s a proposition–it’s not entirely founded, and I don’t know much about radio transmission, but it’s an idea nonetheless: What if some VEXnet keys had some fault in transmitting on a particular channel (specifically, Channel 1)?
That is the only real change when the Field Control System is used, so if there is a difference from FCS vs in practice, that’s the only thing I can think of.
Have you tried using WiFi Channel 1 (the competition channel) at your school? Also are the transmitters in the key for each channel seperate so that one could fail while others would work?
Same thing here - they don’t go in all the way. We often use tape to hold it in as much as possible and this helps but it pulls the key up at an uncomfortable angle. Have others found ways to help with connection issues besides just buying new keys and cortexes?
After making my own field control competition switch (ie switches to channel 1) and playing around with it on a practice field, I got no more disconnects than otherwise regardless of which keys I used, even those which were notorious for working poorly in competition. We found that those which worked more poorly on field control really just had looser connections and if you wiggled them they would instantly disconnect. Remember, folks tend to play much more aggressively in competition than they do in practice.
I’ve honestly never found a key which behaved poorly unless it either (a) had a loose connection or (b) was totally broken (ie wouldn’t connect at all and didn’t work on a computer.)
Want to tell us exactly how to do that? I’ve got an Arduino and a cut up CAT5 Cable in the lab right now, but we don’t know exactly what we would need to make the robot switch.
Running it on the Competition Switch doesn’t set us to Channel 1, right? It would be nice if it did.
For our team when we used to get new keys and cortexes, we just used a rubberband to keep them secured from the onset. That’s what we also have teams do here. We also have bent the connector tabs in both the Cortex and Joystick back to as close as their original positions as possible.
see this post:https://vexforum.com/showpost.php?p=277480&postcount=48
you short pin 6 to ground and when you use a regular switch it will think it is a field switch