5 Steps to prepare for teaching FRC programming in 2024

These are all of the links and steps you need to prepare your software to program in 2024.

This can be a frustrating experience and that’s not what you want your first time students to go through. It provides a tremendous amount of value to go through this process yourself to make sure it’s all set up for your students.

Most of what’s below is condensed form of what’s on WPILib’s docs page. 

***This all assumes you are using a windows computer, wee WPILib’s page if you’re using Mac or linux! Steps will be slightly different.

Install FRC game tools

  1. Uninstall old software if laptop was used last year (Windows -> “Add or remove Programs” -> “NI Software”
  2. Download and run FRC game tools NI installer (I always use the offline option so I can copy it between computers)

Install VS code

  1. Download installer from WPILib
  2. Right click and extract
  3. Find WPILibInstaller.exe and run it 

Image rio 1

  1. Connect to the rio 1 a USB cable and power on the robot
  2. Open roborio imaging tool, it should auto detect the rio (If it doesn’t, try swapping the usb cable, if the usb cable still doesn’t work, plug an ethernet cable from computer to robot radio and then another ethernet cable from radio to roborio)
  3. Select you rio from the target’s list
  4. Type in your team number
  5. Select “format target”
  6. Select the latest image and hit reformat

***Be patient! This takes a while!

Image rio 2

(sd card reader required)

  1. Open “Roborio Imaging tool” from start menu or from shortcut on desktop
  2. Plug in sd card
  3. Select Format Target and latest image
  4. Click SD card image to start
  5. Once formatting is complete, plug into the RoboRio2 sd card slot and power on.
  6. Set your team number by connecting to roborio via USB cable or ethernet through the radio. In the imaging tool “Edit startup settings” -> fill out team number and hit apply.

Program your radio

  1. Download radio configuration tool
  2. Extract and run the exe
  3. Disable wifi
  4. Follow the steps in the tool to program your radio! 
  5. If you have multiple radios, do them all at once

Have vendor libraries at the ready

There are several other tools that you should have downloaded and at the ready for trouble shooting: