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After having just mentored High School FIRST Robotics for well over a decade (both FRC 150 lb robots and FTC 18" cubed approx 40 lb robots), and being an IT Tech w/ more than 2 decades of experience in computer building, repair and diagnosing, and 3 college educated sons who are networking artists (1 -the oldest of which actually travelled the world, not once but twice for Global Crossing helping to actually set up originally the networking backbone worldwide (he installed the switches that the backbone operates over, not once, but twice...the first time to establish the original backbone, then years later to miniaturize those switches when smaller packages were available to save space, reduce wiring, reduce heat, etc, and upgraded it again), why hire new, when you can use the guys that did it originally, nobody knew the true backbone like the original installers.

Anyway, he is now an FTA (Feild Technical Advisor), for FIRST out of New Hampshire, the FRC and FTC Robots are all run on a specially designed and engineered secured wireless network, and all are connected worldwide from field in an event arena, high school gym, or major convention center, etc. (where maybe worldwide up to 25-45 different events), are run over a 3-5 day event period simultaneously from as many locations across the planet with teams that number in the 5,000 teams registered a year, from over 171 countries (the 150 lb FRC robots are playing a task based game, and a different game each year.

The actual whole thing is a technical Engineering Nightmare (disguised as a game only to keep high school students interested), in Steam (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) and prepare them for careers in corporations and industry properly.

Over that period I have seen and we have used and seen a million electronic items in packages so small and light, both used on and off robot, some wireless, some wired, that you would find most extremely hard to detect if used on a vehicle the size of ours we compete with.

As everything must fit within a much smaller package (Just visit AndyMark.com for proof and imagine the millions of possibilities of crossbreeding usages of many of those robot parts available to the robotics community, then multiply by thousands to millions of worldwide sellers, and available parts suppliers...hey I am not encouraging anyone to actually do anything here, just showing the auto speed parts industry is not the only industry to look to when looking for all the possibilities out there you would need to look for), than those we compete with (much larger vehicles), weight to an FRC robot is usually limited to 150 lbs max, so everything that goes into the design of that specific task bot is weighed, not to the pound but to the Oz or 10th of an Oz or even less, constantly documented, and the scales are more accurate that are used in competitions because they are smaller and easier to calibrate, and you are extremely mindful of everything that goes into it, and the rulebook is in even finer detail, and as lengthy as ours (usually 165-175 pages), with only 1 major difference...Our NHRA Section 11 is specific (paraphrased here only......"if it is listed as allowed you may use it, if it is prohibited you may not, but if it is not listed as allowed...ask first." Wherein the FIRST program inspires and encourages "Thinking Outside The Box" type innovation, thinking and doing...Unless it is specifically prohibited by the rules, you are perfectly free to do whatever you like, own it, share it, hide it, use it! Breaking the rules is prohibited, but if the rules do not prohibit something break the rules of science and phyisics itself if you can, and yes, I have seen some unbelievable, absolutely impossible tasks performed at speeds I never thought were possible by a wireless toy.

However, as in NHRA Drag Racing, and FIRST Robotics alike Cheating is discouraged, and highly frowned upon, and if caught both penalize highly for it. In FIRST just like NHRA, there are always going to be cheaters, just like there is in everything in the world.

But, a simple Wire Shark software program and a laptop to run it on will not only locate every single secured or unsecured wireless and or wired network running on, near, or within miles of a specific location where said laptop running wire shark is being run and constantly logging all the discovered networks and users (even if just used or connected for a millisecond space in time, it would be logged, and discoverable, by someone who knows how to use it properly)...I have witnessed my eldest FTA Son who was noticing momentary glitches in their secured robot arena system, he has a dedicated secure laptop just wire shark that is running hours before (a day plus actually), once we build the arena fields, until after the 3-5 day event is fully over, and was able to not only discover an illegal user tapped into the secure dedicated arena rot system, but knew in a flash the exact gps coordinates to locate the offender and was able to walk right up to an arena seat far up in the rafters and nosebleed section to a lone (very interested, and very suspicious spectator, and say hand it over please, and he secured the offending hack device), he was an active team member who thought really highly of himself, and thought he could never get caught, but he was caught red handed with a device that was intended to glitch the system intentionally, for a competitive advantage. It was super easy to see the pattern as it was only being used for, and against the final top 4 ranked teams in said event. And only to help 1 team, and against 3 others. It only disconnected certain robots by glitching the connection momentarily causing instant but lengthy indiv. rebooting.