FIRST and our FRC Control System team have spent the summer improving the FRC Control System. Information about some of those changes, as well as the announcement of the 2017 season beta test teams who will help us validate those changes, is in this blog. We are also working on information about device legality, but we’re not quite ready to share that yet, so stay tuned.

Device Libraries

This season we are making a change to WPILib (for all 3 software languages) where third party software for items not in the Kickoff KOP will be provided separately by that third party.

Since the CMUCam (and perhaps earlier), companies have provided powerful sensors and controllers to FRC teams. We encourage the development of these devices as they help raise the ceiling for teams and enable them to create incredible autonomous and semi-autonomous robot routines. In the past few years, the number of these devices has increased more rapidly (which is good!), but it comes with difficulties. Integrating software for these devices into WPILib requires a substantial amount of work from the device manufacturer and the FRC Control System team, and, we acknowledge that the status quo is not sustainable. As a result, we’ve implemented a solution that is more sustainable for the CS Team and removes some of the headache for vendors to develop and test their products.

Going forward, WPILib will not include direct support for many of these sophisticated devices (including CAN Jaguar and CAN Talon SRX). Instead, it allows the integration of 3rd party code into teams’ WPILib programs. Suppliers provide installers which place their libraries into the correct location on the user’s system. WPILib tools will automatically detect the libraries and allow them to be used in FRC programs. FRC will create a “one-stop-shop” page for these installers to help teams easily locate the software for their selected devices.

We acknowledge that this is a compromise; teams will take additional steps to get and install libraries, but WPILib development is more sustainable and there’s a clearer implementation and ownership path for 3rd parties.

The 2017 Beta Test teams will test this change and provide feedback on how to make the experience as smooth as possible.

Robot Radio

In June, we blogged that we would be introducing a new radio for the 2017 season, and can do so now. The new radio for the 2017 season is the OpenMesh OM5P-AC. The OpenMesh OM5P-AN will continue to be competition legal, provided it has updated 2017 firmware. In order to comply with FCC regulations, the FRC firmware for the OM5P-AC and OM5P-AN disables the web interface and SSH access. You will only be able to configure the settings on the device using the FRC Radio Configuration Utility. Meanwhile, we will add flexibility to that tool to cover as many use cases as possible.

The OM5P-AC is available from Open Mesh and will soon be available from AndyMark. See those sites for pricing and availability. Devices won’t be usable until the firmware and configuration utility are available to teams. Worst case, they’ll be posted on Kickoff Day, and if we can publish sooner, we will announce via this blog.

Beta Testing

The 2017 Beta Test teams have been selected! Thank you to everyone to applied. Teams were selected on the basis of location, past Beta performance, Beta application history, and submitted essay.

Selected teams will help the FRC Control System team test changes to the software libraries and any new hardware FIRST decides to test. Beta teams pledge to share their learnings and findings with the community, especially teams in their area, so make sure to reach out with any questions you may have for them via the FIRST Forums and keep your eyes peeled for any “Open House” or training seminar events in your area.

We are grateful to this group for giving our systems a test run before the season, and we thank them for helping us find and fix any issues before we deploy to the entire FRC community!