WindRiver gone for 2015?

[AlexBrinister]

Help with these projects is always appreciated! Most of the work for the C++11 toolchain is creating packages for different distibutions of Linux. And of course, testing! We currently officially support Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, Windows, and Mac. Anything else involves manual building.

Alex Brinister

[taichichuan]

It was disappointing to hear that WRS is dropping its support of FIRST. They do have a version of their development environment that runs on Linux that would work fine for the cRio.

By issuing a key, they would also enable teams to keep using the existing install. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they'll be doing either of those. Of course, the advantage of the new control system is that WPILib should be able to run on just about any ARM-based board running the PREEMPT_RT patched version of the Linux kernel. One trick would be to do something like taking an Udoo board or the Gertduino plug-over for the Raspberry Pi and port WPILib to support that.

Unfortunately, WRS has a way of checking to see if you've turned the clock back to keep their software working. So, that option will likely not work. Just like FIRST dropped the IFI control system years ago, the cRio looks like it will suffer the same fate. Time marches on.

[AlexBrinister]

It's really sad because there is not really much you can do with the old control systems. My team still has an old IFI robot controller lying around and we have 3 cRIOs. If there isn't anything to develop code on, then all that expensive hardware becomes useless. You can't really sell it to raise money because nobody needs it. They just lie around, unused.

http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain or http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=110720

These projects are probably going to be the only way to really work with the old control system which is unfortunate. The one thing that I loved about WindRiver was its debugging capabilities which were quite useful. It is sad to see it go.

Alex Brinister

[Greg McKaskle]

I believe there are two distinct topics in this thread.

The original topic is -- what are the possibilities of using cRIOs in 2015 and beyond. The goal is to provide SW that targets the cRIO so that it may be used on practice bots, training bots, demo bots, etc. Only FIRST can determine whether the cRIO is legal for use on a competition bot, but I doubt that will be allowed. LabVIEW, Java, And Python are relatively straightforward, and relatively obvious. C++ support is a bit more involved. If a team is able to obtain a license to the WR tools, they will work as they do today. The other option is to use the linked build tools.

The second topic seems to be about what HW the new WPILib may support. The I/O of the FRC controller is quite different than that of an RPi. The libraries are being made more portable, and could be taken to other platforms, but the priority is obviously to make them safe and robust on the FRC HW.

Greg McKaskle

[KPSch]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

I believe there are two distinct topics in this thread.

The original topic is -- what are the possibilities of using cRIOs in 2015 and beyond. The goal is to provide SW that targets the cRIO so that it may be used on practice bots, training bots, demo bots, etc. Only FIRST can determine whether the cRIO is legal for use on a competition bot, but I doubt that will be allowed. LabVIEW, Java, And Python are relatively straightforward, and relatively obvious. C++ support is a bit more involved. If a team is able to obtain a license to the WR tools, they will work as they do today. The other option is to use the linked build tools.

The second topic seems to be about what HW the new WPILib may support. The I/O of the FRC controller is quite different than that of an RPi. The libraries are being made more portable, and could be taken to other platforms, but the priority is obviously to make them safe and robust on the FRC HW.

Greg McKaskle

Yes, my original post was specifically about possibilities for using the cRIO in 2015 and beyond for practice/demo bots. Our team will probably use one of the tools linked by Joe. Hopefully FIRST can get something worked out with WindRiver for teams that want to continue using their cRIOs for non-competition uses.

As far as alternate control systems, RPi would be tricky since its GPIO lines are 3.3v. The BBB might be a better choice. Of course, there's always Arduino with something like RobotOpen.

[taichichuan]

Originally Posted by KPSch

Yes, my original post was specifically about possibilities for using the cRIO in 2015 and beyond for practice/demo bots. Our team will probably use one of the tools linked by Joe. Hopefully FIRST can get something worked out with WindRiver for teams that want to continue using their cRIOs for non-competition uses.

As far as alternate control systems, RPi would be tricky since its GPIO lines are 3.3v. The BBB might be a better choice. Of course, there's always Arduino with something like RobotOpen.

FWIW, I've had very good success runing 'bots with RobotOpen and a Sasquatch board. It works like a champ and allows my Arduino-aware developers to write some cool code. The layout concept of the Sasquatch board and the new roboRio are also vary similar. I've also used the Arduino add-in shields from Team 221 (and Andy Mark) with Arduino Unos. These also work well and are reasonably cheap. This doesn't keep your cRios running, but it does allow your software squad to experiment with past year's bots.

You could also look at the Udoo board. I've got a couple that we use and they have single, dual or quad-core ARM goodness with an Arduino Due on the same board. I haven't tried it with the Team 221 shield yet, though.

HTH,

Mike