We are a second-year team. Our Classmate PC is from the 2010 season. We are a little confused about how to update our Classmate PC and our various programming workstations from FRC 2010 to FRC 2011. We are wondering if anyone has any insight on this. Here is the cast of characters:
There is the USB flash drive in the 2011 Kit of Parts for re-imaging the Classmate computer.
On the Kit of Parts page, there is a “Classmate_Update.bat” file stored in a ZIP file accessible from the “Classmate Update” link on that page.
On the National Instruments web site, there is a 2011 LabVIEW Update that is a “mandatory update for the LabVIEW portion of the FIRST Robotics Competition Softwaare 2011. You MUST install this update in order to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition.” This page says, “This software update is meant to be installed ONLY after installing LabVIEW FRC from the DVD that comes with the 2011 Controls Kit or on the Classmate computer that comes with the kit.” This statement would seem to imply that LabVIEW (or the LabVIEW runtime environment) is installed on the (re-imaged) 2011 FRC Classmate computer, and that this update must be run on the Classmate.
Also on the NI web site, there is a 2011 Utilities Update that has the same language above, about being required in order to compete in FRC in 2011. In addition, the page says that since this update “contains the update to the cRIO Imaging Utility, teams using Java and C/C++ will also need to install it.”
The NI web site also has a 2011 Driver Station Update. Once again, the page says this update is required in FRC 2011. The page has specific instructions for how to install the update on the Classmate PC.
On each of the above three pages on the NI web site, it says that the three updates must be installed in the order shown above.
There is an old page on the NI web site, 2010 Driver Station Update. This is the driver station update page for LAST year (2010).
The Kit of Parts page also has a link, How to Set Up Your 2011 Driver Station. This document says to re-image the Classmate using the Flash drive, run the Classmate_Update.bat file (to activate Windows 7), and then “Update the Classmate Software.” But for the latter step, it provides a link to the old 2010 Driver Station Update, rather than the new 2011 Driver Station Update (!). Confusing!
So, here are our questions about how to upgrade our Classmate PC from FRC 2010 to FRC 2011:
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In the “Update the Classmate Software” step above, shouldn’t we run the new 2011 Driver Station Update rather than the old 2010 Driver Station Update?
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There is another thread here on Chief Delphi that points out that the LabVIEW runtime environment in indeed installed on the Classmate PC. (Which makes sense, because the default Dashboard software that ran on the Classmate PC – at least in 2010 – was written in LabVIEW.) So, since the Classmate PC contains the LabVIEW runtime environment, should we also run the 2011 LabVIEW Update and 2011 Utilities Update on the Classmate PC? If so, as explained on each of the above NI pages, we should install those two updates before installing the 2011 Driver Station Update.
For our programming workstation PCs, we are programming in Wind River C++ (not LabVIEW). As such, per the instructions on the National Instruments LabVIEW installation DVD in the Kit of Parts, we followed the instructions to “Install only the FRC Tools” from that disc. When we do this, a LOT of National Instruments software still gets installed on the workstation. So, we are still wondering:
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On our programming workstation PCs, should we install the 2011 LabVIEW Update?
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Similarly, on our programming PCs, should we install the 2011 Utilities Update? It would seem we should, because (among other things) this includes the updated cRIO Imaging Utility, which we usually run from one of our programming PCs.
Sorry for the long post. I wanted to try and explain everything clearly. If anyone has some help for us, that would be great. Thanks for your help!