To FMSLight or not FMSLight, that is the question.

[eugenebrooks]

I am starting this thread as a place for teams and organizations to discuss the importance of FMSLight in putting on their off-season events. At the WRRF CalGames, we have used FMSLight to control our off-season event since FMSLight was first available in 2009. Every few years we have augmented FMSLight with a custom real time scoring system when required, the most recent example being scoring mini-bots which climbed towers. Without FMSLight, the WRRF pretty much does not have a CalGames event. Computers with a working install of the last version of FMSLight are literally croaking and are becoming hard to find.

Maintaining FMSLight obviously cost FIRST money and it was not used at actual FIRST regional events. It is understandable that FIRST dropped support of FMSLight. The off-season events are a major part of the FIRST program, however, which teams use to attract new students to the program each year. New teams for the FIRST program are also likely to have their first exposure to the program through an off-season event. Off-season events encourage growth of the FIRST program!

What would I, as the President of the WRRF, like to see FIRST do if it isn't going to support FMSLight? I would like to see FIRST establish the source code for the 2010 FMSLight as free software so that teams, and organizations who support off-season events, can maintain FMSLight as free software in the FIRST community. It would cost FIRST nothing to do this and FIRST has everything to gain if it did.

The one thing that I will ask of those who participate in this discussion is lets keep it positive and pleasant.

Eugene Brooks
President of the Western Region Robots Forum (WRRF)

[Racer26]

Truth be told: I'd like to see FIRST open-source the full FMS, complete with Audience overlay screens Results screens and current season scoring components.

I don't think they need to help us set it up (I realize it requires SQL Server and such)

HQ won't give you the FMS with a field borrowed for an offseason unless you have an FTA. It seems to me, from nearly every offseason I've experienced, that most of them have an FTA and get the full FMS.

I understand the concerns about open-sourcing FMS possibly exposing weak points, and opening the door to the possibility of more Einstein-2012 type debacles, but I believe that by open-sourcing it, such vulnerabilities are much more likely to be found and fixed before Bad Things (TM) happen.

There already exists a partial open-source clone of FMS on sourceforge (though the project appears to have been abandoned some months ago).

For me? FMS Light was not really much use. FMSDelta was a far superior variant, but I would have preferred the full FMS. Sadly, none of the download links to that server at HQ that had them seem to work any more.

[TheBassett]

I've been working on a fms light-like program for a while and have been testing it at scrimmages that we hold at our buildsite (The scrimmages are a big part of our team which we call Destination Einstein(DE) - more about DE can be found here: https://sites.google.com/a/waltonrobotics.org/de/). Just this past week it worked without flaws for all of our matches(about 10) with 5 robots on the field. I will be releasing the program and more information on it as soon as the code gets finalized(which will be soon). Right now it includes the full field(6 robots) control along with live match timers. We are planning to work on a score display but haven’t been able to do too much with it yet. Are there any things that you would like to see it be able to do?

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Truth be told: I'd like to see FIRST open-source the full FMS, complete with Audience overlay screens Results screens and current season scoring components.

I don't think they need to help us set it up (I realize it requires SQL Server and such)

HQ won't give you the FMS with a field borrowed for an offseason unless you have an FTA. It seems to me, from nearly every offseason I've experienced, that most of them have an FTA and get the full FMS.

I understand the concerns about open-sourcing FMS possibly exposing weak points, and opening the door to the possibility of more Einstein-2012 type debacles, but I believe that by open-sourcing it, such vulnerabilities are much more likely to be found and fixed before Bad Things (TM) happen.

A few factors at play here I think, one of which is all of the extra code for interfacing with the networking equipment and PLCs around the field. I'd imagine that this is setup/coded to work with one configuration and that is what FIRST uses for the field. This equipment isn't cheap and FIRST doesn't have the time or the staff to support FMS.

Another factor, although much more speculative, is that FMS is proprietary and gives FIRST a competitive advantage over other programs. Sure, nothing that FMS does is groundbreaking, but it still represents an investment that FIRST has made and doesn't want to give that investment out for free to others.

The best approach to this would likely be to continue the approach towards developing a third party open source FMSLight for use. I seem to remember reading a paper that had defined the interface from Driver Station <-> FMS <-> Robot somewhere that looked to be quite complete.