Legacy C++ Programming Support for cRIO?

[Travis Hoffman]

Pertaining to this CD thread – http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=127219...

Have FIRST/WPI formulated a solution to transition C++ teams from the WindRiver programming environment to something equivalent that doesn't have a license key with an expiration date? I can imagine there are plenty of teams out there (just spoke with one today) who hope to use their old cRIO-based control systems on practice robots and in other applications, using C++ as their continued programming software of choice.

Not everyone who uses C++ has the knowledge or confidence to investigate and set up an alternate solution on their own. I would hope FIRST/WPI can provide step-by-step guidance on a best-case solution they are confident will work for the hundreds of teams who are looking to continue to program their older cRIO’s using C++ and WPILib.

While some may be comfortable switching to some Linux-backed solution, many of the less-experienced still want to run the legacy programming software in Windows. Hopefully FIRST/WPI will communicate solutions that accommodate multiple operating systems.

[Kevin O'Connor]

There is an open source toolchain that was developed a while ago by one of Brad’s students that teams can use: http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain
There are Windows binaries included in that project.

We are hoping to do better than that though. A mentor on one of the Beta teams has volunteered to work on a plugin for Eclipse that makes that toolchain easier to use and I am going to work on the minor tweaks necessary for the old libraries to support using the new v57 image for 4-slot cRIOs that NI has made to work with the new 2015 Driver Station. The 2014 Driver Station and corresponding libraries and image will still be made available to continue using 8-slots, but it may be a bit more tedious than using a 4-slot with the new DS and image will be. I’m not sure if all of the documentation for this solution (or even the complete solution itself) will be ready to go by kickoff or not, but it shouldn’t be too much later than that if it doesn’t quite make it.

[Travis Hoffman]

There is an open source toolchain that was developed a while ago by one of Brad’s students that teams can use: http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain
There are Windows binaries included in that project.

We are hoping to do better than that though. A mentor on one of the Beta teams has volunteered to work on a plugin for Eclipse that makes that toolchain easier to use and I am going to work on the minor tweaks necessary for the old libraries to support using the new v57 image for 4-slot cRIOs that NI has made to work with the new 2015 Driver Station. The 2014 Driver Station and corresponding libraries and image will still be made available to continue using 8-slots, but it may be a bit more tedious than using a 4-slot with the new DS and image will be. I’m not sure if all of the documentation for this solution (or even the complete solution itself) will be ready to go by kickoff or not, but it shouldn’t be too much later than that if it doesn’t quite make it.

That all sounds promising. I wouldn't have the experience necessary to utilize the original link - an eclipse plugin sounds much better.

Do you have any update on the status of this topic and availability of the more user-friendly plugin?

Thanks.

[Kevin O'Connor]

Travis,

I unfortunately don't have any update for you on availability of an Eclipse plugin to program cRIOs. It is still on my radar to try to get this done (we recognize that many teams have one or more cRIOs that they may wish to use on prototyping and display robots), but our priority is support of the 2015 Control System and Game.

[Travis Hoffman]

I believe this CD post refers to a newly-created solution for the original inquiry - http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1438087. Looks promising!

Are there/will there be any other parallel cRIO support projects going on, or should we treat Jeff Downs' plugin as the pseudo-official solution?

[Kevin O'Connor]

Jeff Downs is the mentor from the Beta team that put together this solution to simplify the process of using C++ on a cRIO so his plugin is the one I was discussing above and we don't have any near term plans to develop anything else. We ended up deciding not to change to using v57 as a described above, instead continue using v52 as described in the documentation on the project wiki. Currently this means that you need to use the 2014 DS to communicate with the cRIO, but a solution for this is in progress.