2019 CTRE Phoenix Release
As of this post, CTRE Phoenix for 2019 FRC is now available!
This release is compatible with GradleRIO and VSCode, and also introduces the new Phoenix Tuner tool. The software API is almost 100% compatible with the 2018 API (with a couple minor exceptions listed in our documentation). Read on for more information on the components of this release:
Phoenix Installer
The installer for CTRE Phoenix can be found in the same location as last year.
A Windows installer (our recommended method of installing Phoenix) and a zip of components for non-windows machines are both available.
Firmware
The minimum necessary device firmware has changed - Talon SRX and Victor SPX will both require at least firmware version 4.11, and CANifier and Pigeon IMU will require at least version 4.0. These are available via the Phoenix installer and the individual product pages on the CTRE website.
Documentation and Blog
Last year, we transitioned the most-used portions of our documentation to GitHub, while reference material remained in the separate Software Reference Manual.
This year, we’ve gone one step further - we’ve moved all of our documentation to the ReadTheDocs platform, including documentation formerly in the Software Reference Manual. There are a couple of advanced topics still being migrated, but the new docs cover the majority of use cases.
https://phoenix-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
This platform allows for easy navigation and robust formatting, and at any time you can download a pdf file of the documentation for offline use.
While it’s been in development we’ve kept the source documentation private, but we have now updated our Phoenix-Documentation repository as the source for our ReadTheDocs site. We welcome contributions from any community members, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback.
One other feature this brings is a Blog! Our main ReadTheDocs page will be updated periodically with information on new features and updates. Right now, it has all the information on our new features and changes for 2019 - this includes lots of things that wouldn’t fit in this announcement post.
Phoenix Tuner
As some of you are already aware, Silverlight is no longer supported on the roboRIO for 2019 - this means the previous web-interface CAN plug-in for updating and configuring CAN devices no longer works.
As a replacment (and expansion!) for these features, we’re introducing a new tool called Phoenix Tuner.
This is a Windows application that interfaces with the roboRIO to provide all the tools you need to successfully use our CAN devices (including PDP and PCM). In addition to the firmware and device ID updating features, Phoenix Tuner includes:
- Ability to Firmware-update all devices of one type at the same time
- Expanded Self-test Capabilities (no more character limit!)
- Ability to Configure all persistent device parameters
- Ability to control a Talon SRX or Victor SPX in Percent Output mode (typically requires the Driver Station to enable)
- Built-in data plotter for Motor Controllers
We’ll be continually expanding on the features that Phoenix Tuner offers - there’s no specific timeline, but planned future features include support for additional control modes and additional plotting features.
The latest release will always be available on the GitHub repository linked above, and the Phoenix installer will always include the latest version of Phoenix Tuner at the time of publish.
…and More!
There are more API features and information that wouldn’t fit in this post, so check out our documentation for all the details.
Good Luck this Season!