FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

NI Guest Blog - roboRIO 2.0

Sep 03, 2021 Written by April Riddett, NI Product Manager

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Howdy, folks!

We at NI are excited to follow up REV’s announcement with some further details on what you can expect from the roboRIO 2.0. As part of NI’s renewed commitment to FIRST, we wanted to provide an updated roboRIO that would better meet the needs of teams today while not being a dramatic departure from the roboRIO you all know and love (I hope!). Our key priority was resolving what we call ‘match-breakers’—anything that forces a team to miss a match, or be bypassed in a match, or have a sad robot sit there for a match. We’re making a few key improvements to help more teams get to more of their matches.

  1. Adding an SD card slot

We’ve replaced the USB cable retention screws with a real, actual, functional SD card slot. The goal of adding an SD card slot is to not only provide more memory onboard, but also reduce the number of teams who make a small code change and accidentally corrupt the code onboard the roboRIO. Ideally, teams can keep a “known good” version of code on an SD card and test new code directly on the SD card in the roboRIO 2.0. If something goes wrong and your new code is crashing, you can swap the SD cards, restart the roboRIO 2.0, and be ready to compete in your match in approximately 23 seconds.

  1. Selective brownout voltage setpoint

A FIRST Robotics Competition robot may reboot due to loose connections or when the battery voltage droops to ~4.5V due to high current use. To prevent a voltage-based reboot, the roboRIO implements a brownout feature where non-essential loads such as motors are disabled -- allowing the battery voltage to recover and avoid getting the voltage low enough to cause a reboot. RoboRIO 1.0 used a fixed brownout threshold of 7V – which has worked quite well. Team feedback indicated interest in the ability to customize the voltage threshold. For roboRIO 2.0, we’ve made the brownout voltage setpoint configurable to let teams adopt different brownout strategies at different points in a match, to adapt to different driving styles, and to adjust for battery conditions.

  1. Increased memory, processor speed, and RAM

We’ve updated all the internals to keep up with the incredible software FIRST Robotics Competition teams are designing, and to set the roboRIO 2.0 to be an asset to teams for years to come.

If you’ve got questions, comments, or concerns, please reach out via the support boards at www.ni.com/frc!

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Comments

Submitted by Nelson Green (not verified) on Fri, 09/03/2021 - 9:43am
How soon are we expecting pre-orders and delivery of them? Looks great.

Submitted by kpilotte on Fri, 09/17/2021 - 3:03pm

Neither an official announcement has been made nor details about purchasing roboRIO 2.0 have been released, but we expect orders can start in October. The exact date is to be determined. 

Submitted by David Vo (not verified) on Fri, 09/03/2021 - 10:48am
From that render it looks like the SD card slot takes a microSD card, given how wide it is next to the 2 USB ports. Could we get some clarification on the size of the card slot and how deep it goes?

Submitted by kpilotte on Fri, 09/17/2021 - 3:04pm

Yes, it is a microSD card slot. The depth allows the entire microSD card to be fully inserted.

Submitted by Graham Crowe (not verified) on Tue, 09/07/2021 - 6:58pm

I am looking for the documentation of the dimensions, particularly the measurements around connector placement. Alternatively, if you could confirm that the dimensions and connector placement are identical to the RoboRIO v1 (except for the new SD card) then that would suffice.

Thank you

Submitted by kpilotte on Fri, 09/17/2021 - 3:05pm

The dimension is very similar to roboRIO v1.0. The microSD card slot replaced where ground lug used to be. There is a slight shift on connector placement, but should be very minimal impact.

Submitted by Jon Uren (not verified) on Fri, 09/10/2021 - 2:46pm

Any chance you could provide plugs/covers for all openings? Our team very rarely use alot of the open ports so at this moment we will create A 3D printed part or something like that however new teams tend to forget to do this and will end up with chips or other debris in there rio which can cause issues.

Submitted by kpilotte on Fri, 09/17/2021 - 3:07pm

Thanks for the suggestion. At this time, plugs for ports are not accessories that will be commercially avaialble (but glad to hear you're careful about protective your controller from debris!). 

Submitted by Ian Fettes (not verified) on Sun, 09/19/2021 - 8:14pm

How much of a difference does the 2.0's internals (RAM, memory, CPU) make compared to the roboRIO 1.0?

Submitted by kpilotte on Mon, 09/27/2021 - 5:43pm

Hi Ian, 

Here are the differences between the roboRIO 1.0 and 2.0:

  roboRIO 1.0 roboRIO 2.0
Processor speed 667 MHz 866 MHz
Nonvolatile Memory 512 MB 16 MB (not accessible) / 4GB microSD (accessible)
DDR3 Memory 256 MB 512 MB

 

Submitted by Phillip Facemire (not verified) on Fri, 09/24/2021 - 2:30pm

Please let e know, I want to purchase at least one.

Thanks,

Phillip

Submitted by kpilotte on Tue, 09/28/2021 - 8:36am

Stay tuned to the FRC blog (you can subscribe!) and social media channels (Facebook/Twitter); we promise to let the community know when roboRIO 2.0 is available for purchase. 

Submitted by Michael (not verified) on Sat, 10/09/2021 - 10:09pm

Can we get SD card requirements / recommendations?  Are there limitations on size and or speed for the SD cards?

Submitted by Brian Ashline (not verified) on Tue, 10/12/2021 - 12:08pm

Will every team be expected to use the new RobotRIO 2.0 controller or is it just an option if teams want to use it?

Will code from the Rio 2.0 be able to be ported to the RobotRIO 1.0 for practice bots and other applications?

Submitted by kpilotte on Tue, 10/12/2021 - 3:12pm

Teams will be able to use the current roboRIO or the roboRIO 2.0 on their robot. Yes, a team’s code written for the current roboRIO can be ported to the roboRIO 2.0 and vice versa. 

Submitted by Paul Barton (not verified) on Fri, 10/15/2021 - 7:52pm

We have our first RoboRIO 2.0 modules.  We have been unable to program them using the methods used for the 1.0 version.  Perhaps the documentation needs to be updated?  The PC does not recognize the USB bus at all.  Safe mode did not look the same as in the 1.0 version.  There appeared to be no place to log in

Submitted by Kevin O'Connor (not verified) on Mon, 10/18/2021 - 10:37am
Hi Paul,

You will need updated software and documentation to utilize the roboRIO 2.0. This material will be released publicly shortly before Kickoff, but will be available very soon for teams participating in the Beta test. If you'd like to get your roboRIO 2.0 up and running now, and help us test the software before official release, you can find the details in the blog here: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2021-2022-beta-testing

Submitted by Paul Barton (not verified) on Tue, 12/07/2021 - 9:40pm

We are on the beta test program for RoboRio 2.0.  After several false starts we are able to image and to connect with driver station.  When we deploy, we get a run time error of Missing JRE.  No such file or directory.  JRE/JAVA. 

What are we doing wrong?

The Gradle commands: deployjrefrcjavaroborio:

Test for JRE in RoboRio: MISSING

installing JRE: JRE Deployed

However, it actually is not. Code error message: JRE/bin/java: no such file or directory.

Running it again shows it as still missing, and it tries to install it again, claims it works again, again does not.

We are the FIRST robotic team 4206 : Nolan Catholic High School RoboViks. 

Thank You.

Submitted by Kevin O'Connor (not verified) on Fri, 12/10/2021 - 4:44pm

Hi Paul,

The best place to get support for issues you are seeing with the Beta software is in the appropriate subsection of the Discussion section on the TeamForge project: https://usfirst.collab.net/sf/discussion/do/listForums/projects.frc_2021_beta/discussion

This area is monitored by the developers of the various software components and they can reply to your issues directly.

Submitted by Bill Bagshaw (not verified) on Fri, 10/22/2021 - 10:47pm

Will the roboRIO 2.0 be something that can be opted into by veteran teams to be in the KoP?

 

Submitted by kpilotte on Mon, 10/25/2021 - 9:02am

It's not, but any team can purchase a roboRIO 2.0 from AndyMark.

Submitted by oidc_generic_0f... on Mon, 11/29/2021 - 6:39pm

We would like to try to have a competition robot with the RoboRio 2.0 and a test robot with a RoboRio 1.0.  How hard will it be to have one set of source code and deploy environment work with both of interchangeably?

Submitted by Kevin O'Connor (not verified) on Tue, 11/30/2021 - 9:59am

It shouldn't be hard at all! If both roboRIO's are set to the same team number the same code project will deploy to both devices without any modification. If you utilize the new brownout configuration on the roboRIO 2.0, that specific function will do nothing on the roboRIO 1.0. You may see slightly different behavior between devices if you are pushing the limits on RAM, CPU, or storage available on the roboRIO 1.0., but other than that things should be fully compatible between the two.

Submitted by Marc Levesque (not verified) on Tue, 01/11/2022 - 5:02pm

Has there been any changes to the USB Host connectivity, or is it still a shared 2.0 bus?

Submitted by Jeff B (not verified) on Fri, 01/14/2022 - 12:30pm

There wasn't any change in the USB bus between the roboRIO and roboRIO 2.0.  It's still the shared 2.0 bus.

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