Use Phoenix 5 or PhoenixPro for Falcon 500?

[ksquare]

CTRE now has two APIs in Releases · CrossTheRoadElec/Phoenix-Releases · GitHub.

There is the “Phoenix 5” with com.ctre.phoenix.motorcontrol.can.TalonFX and its WPI wrapper WPI_TalonFX that works as before, using firmware C:\Users\Public\Documents\FRC\2023 Firmware\Phoenix\TalonFX-Application-22.1.1.0-season2023.crf

There’s also the newer “PhoenixPro” with com.ctre.phoenixpro.hardware.TalonFX that already implements the WPI motor controller interface. It needs the firmware from C:\Users\Public\Documents\FRC\2023 Firmware\PhoenixPro\TalonFX-Application-23.4.0.3-Pro-season2023.crf on the Falcon 500 rep. its embedded TalonFX.

Problem with PhoenixPro is that I get a runtime message
“Device is not licensed. Cannot get any data from it.”
and the motor won’t run.

Any idea how to fix that “license” error? Or is it not worth it, because PhoenixPro is at this time simply not ready to replace the older API?

[bobbysq]

@ksquare

Any idea how to fix that “license” error?

Cash or credit?

[CTRE Announcement] New CANcoder Blog And Phoenix Beta 2023 Announcement

Hey All! Blog Post - CANcoder Product Notice First, we’d like to bring your attention to a recent post regarding the latest batch of CANcoders. Please check out the post below if you find the plastic tab on your CANcoder housing is a bit too long to allow your wires to pass through. Phoenix 2023 Beta Announcement We also would like to announce that Phoenix Beta is underway for the 2023 season! This covers a general update on Phoenix 5 and Tuner v1, as well as announcing our new Tuner X ap…

[Jacob_C]

Phoenix Pro requires paid licensing to use, while Phoenix 5 is the same library available in the past and remains free-to-use.

See here for licensing:

Device Licensing

[ksquare]

Pro requires paid licensing to use

Thanks for the explanation!
That’s great, mentors can use this to introduce the advantages of free, open source software.

[Smtopps]

I bet this year there is going to be a number of teams who program using phoenix pro without understanding that you have to pay for it. Then they are going to ask for help and be told they have to pay. Then they will not want to pay and have to rewrite a bunch of code to fix it.

Just to be clear my frustration is having two API’s that do roughly the same thing.

[Jacob_C]

Our goal is to make it as clear as possible that Phoenix Pro requires paid licenses. We’ve just made another set of wording tweaks to make it more obvious - if anyone sees download/availability locations where it should be made clearer, please let us know via DM/Discord/Email ([email protected]).

[Henry_Mahnke]

Isn’t Phoenix pro only available on a single device or on a canivore, forcing you to pay yet another 300 dollars and implement a new system for many teams?

[Thad_House]

You can license phoenix pro per device. So you’d purchase one license per device you want to license. Or you can license a canivore, and then all devices hooked up to a licensed canivore will be automatically licensed, without needing an individual device license.