"Netcomm Usage Reporting"

Technical NI LabVIEW
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I was recently looking at the internals of the LabVIEW WPILib, and keep seeing references to “NetComm_UsageReport_report.vi”. It seems that whenever a WPILib robot sensor or actuator is opened it reports it to the mysterious network communications task that runs the driver station communications.

Looking around on the internet I can’t find any mention of this. What is it used for? Does FIRST keep track of what components are used on teams’ robots?

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Yes… This allows FIRST to have data to prioritize effort spent on areas of the control system and make decisions on deprecations, etc. The data only actually goes somewhere when playing on a competition field.

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