The 2015 FRC control system is a success

[MrRoboSteve]

Just returned from my second regional (one volunteering on the field, and one as a mentor). On the long drive back to Bloomington from Milwaukee, my thoughts went back to my nervousness about the new control system. I remember talking to Al at the regional in Minneapolis last year, relating my hopes that the roboRIO had the reliability of the cRIO, and not the Digital Sidecar. I've also heard tales of what happened in the last two control system transitions.

If you consider the logistics of deploying a new control system, there's a lot to be done -- think just about training 10,000 or so people on the new system, and installing new software on their machines. In the commercial world, a conversion like this would cost multiple tens of millions of dollars in people costs alone.

And yet we've done it. We learned at week 1 that the pit needed an organized software update process to get teams current. This last weekend, I saw CSAs and volunteers from teams worked together, getting the updates pushed in about an hour.

Good things about the new control system:

programming model largely retained (although the people who count from 0 won)
superior mechanically (we'll need a game like last year's to be certain, though)
no more digital sidecar (yay!)
MXP ecosystem jumpstarted successfully
CAN on every robot just works
The PCM seems more reliable than the Spike for compressor control
Fewer mysterious on-field problems

Things that could be improved:

slow robot to field connection at startup
need to close/reopen DS software regularly at driver station connection
occasional issues updating firmware
occasional issues where the DS won't connect
occasional (less often, though) mysterious on-field issues

Based on my experiences, I consider the new control system a success.

Thanks to everyone -- the folks at NI, their suppliers, CTRE, the WPILib authors, the staff at FIRST, the alpha and beta test teams, the CSAs in the pit, and everyone I'm forgetting for contributing to a successful migration.