What do they do in beta?

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what features are being tested in the Control System Beta 2019?

Currently we do not know. The software has not been released. We test the new features which for the C++/Java side will be Beta Visual Studios and anything else they add. The LabVIEW side is unknown at this point.

FRC 7432 NOS

Likely some further testing of VSCode and GradleRIO. I don’t have my email yet, but I’ll be sure to post back here when I get access.

We’ve beta tested last year, and will be again this year.

Usually what happens is the teams are asked to check over the code / plugins to ensure that there are no production errors when teams use their robots in competition.

Generally we are given a new set of the partner platforms (NI LabVIEW, CTRE Phoenix, and Kauai’s navX)
We then update our previous robot code over to the new system, reporting the issues we had, or any good things.

Once that’s done, we usually try to compete in an offseason event with the new system. There we can see real match usage and find any issues (Notably last year we found a pretty major WPILib memory leak regarding reading from the navX).

It’s pretty trivial, but it helps HQ and the partners a lot to find any extra bugs.

We talked about our plans last Tuesday, things we want to do…

  • Upgrade 2018 code
  • Rookies create new project for a pancake bot
  • Checkout unit testing
  • extend gradle build script to ensure code is committed before deploying to bot.

If you visit the alpha site on ScreenSteps you can see the pages that are meant for the beta teams, including suggested tasks that they complete.

https://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/currentCS/m/79833/l/230859-2019-beta-task-overview