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Tough Stump Rodeo
Cyntony recently attended Tough Stump Rodeo 2025 (TSR25), a test event pushing the limits of tactical communications, drones, TAK, and robotics. Industry participants included leading companies such as Boston Dynamics, Skydio, and Red Cat. Observers in military, search and rescue, law enforcement, and homeland security came from all over the USA (and some from abroad) to witness real-life operational scenarios and see tech in action, including our own new data comms gear.
We attended TSR25 to launch and demonstrate our new XTND family of base station products featuring Doodle Labs Radios. The event’s location in the remote upper Ruby River valley in Montana offered a wide open, yet challenging environment to show off our technology.
Planning and Collaboration
The initial plan was to set up a few XTND base stations and test the network throughput in various scenarios. A surprising and welcome collaboration opportunity arrived as a result of the first people we got a chance to chat with! The folks at CRG (Cornerstone Research Group) had a specific communications problem they needed to be solved. Their planned demo of their ballistics-safe battery tech involved shooting lithium-ion cells with a .308 rifle to demonstrate their inherent safety versus standard battery hazard, but the range safety team at TSR25 understandably objected to observers watching a live demo, up close at the gun range. So, the test needed a live stream to the operations center on site. At this remote ranch in Montana, there is no networking infrastructure whatsoever, not even cell service! We agreed to help and got to work planning a suitable deployment of XTND assets.
The gun range is about ¾ of a mile from the OPS center, no sweat at all for Doodle Radios, except the range is in a gully in the foothills, blocking line of sight. We set up a relay station in the bottom of the gully in a spot with a view of both spots. This presented a great opportunity to use two XTND-DIRECT base stations in Doodle Labs Multi Radio Mesh Mode, with one operating in the 915 MHz band and the other in the 2.4 GHz Band. Setup was easy, we simply attached them to an ST-R sectioned mast/tripod and plugged the Ethernet cables into a battery powered PoE injector. To complete the data link an XTND-OMNI was set up at the OPS center and a Wearable Doodle Radio with AD-62/DB-915-2450-S antennas at the range.
The Test
After setting up the network, we made another great connection, this time with Reticulate Micro (RMX Government). They offered to set up their VAST video encoding platform on our Layer 2 wireless network.
We integrated the VAST encoder into our Doodle Labs network and successfully streamed a 500 kbps FMV (Full Motion Video) feed from a live-fire test at the gun range. Under normal circumstances, achieving comparable video quality would have required anywhere from 2 to 4 Mbps, but VAST’s advanced compression pipeline enabled a much more efficient stream without significant loss in visual fidelity, as seen in the video below. Note that frame drops were caused by a large amount of interference from the myriad other wireless devices at the event.
This video first shows the explosive result of a bullet impacting a standard Li-ion battery, followed by the intentionally boring results of a bullet impacting a CRG AgilePower gunshot-safe battery.
Discussion
While bandwidth constraints weren’t a limiting factor for this test, the broader implications are critical. At extended operational ranges, RF links often need to be switched to narrower channel bandwidths to boost power spectral density and maintain link integrity. The trade-off is reduced available throughput. By dramatically lowering the bitrate required for FMV, we make it feasible to support live video over those long-range, low-bandwidth links, extending the operational envelope without compromising situational awareness.
During the test, we streamed live footage of CRG conducting side-by-side battery trials. One was a mass-produced Chinese lithium battery; the other, their internally-developed AgilePower safe battery. As expected, the Chinese battery went into thermal runaway and caught fire. The AgilePower remained stable under identical conditions. The key takeaway here isn’t just battery safety, it’s that we were able to observe the entire event remotely, in real time, over a tactical-grade wireless mesh using just half a megabit per second.
The Cyntony XTND base stations are a force multiplier for connected teams looking for high throughput communications, from its ease of deployment to its high performance. If you would like to learn more about the XTND base stations,
