[DavidGitz]

The reason that I'm posting this is because we have already shipped our robot, and trying to avoid any un-needed downtime on our first day at our event. I understand that re-imaging the cRIO is not normally a time consuming process, but sometimes things happen, and I would rather avoid having things happen at an event that do not necessarily* have to happen. It's all about proper risk management. Normally, I would absolutely agree with your comment about "worth the hassle". However, there have been (very rarely) times when re-formatting the cRIO for whatever reason, including a firmware update, resulted in a series of events to happen that resulted in a significant increase in down-time. Some of these reasons include: Ethernet connection comes unplugged, battery dies, computer stops responding, etc. Obviously most of these things can (and are) mitigated as best as possible by proper procedures, communication and extreme diligence. But sometimes things happen, that you cannot control.

Necessarily is obviously the word in question, and since I was not involved with developing the changes and the documentation supplied does not imply that updating the cRIO before the Driver Station is required (as long as the cRIO is at the correct level before-hand) I feel this is a valid question.