That’s strange, most testing is done on Macs, we use Macs for development. The site uses webSerial, we also use that in VEXcode for the web versions of EXP and IQ, haven’t heard of any issues with Mac.
The popup asking for port selection should appear even if no serial ports are detected (when it will be empty). I assume you were using a recent version of Chrome, only Chrome is supported and it should have shown an error for other browsers.
This looks like it is in case the V5 brain were to be flipped. So like, if more ports break, you flip the brain upside down quickly before the match to expose working ports with the right colors at the correct direction.
It was my understanding from the GUI, specifically this screen:
that each “group” of ports would only support one robot, and the information from that one robot would show up in the colored rectangle of the GUI next to those ports. Therefore in a typical setup one robot would be plugged into each corner of the brain. Perhaps I was mistaken. @levipope can you clarify?
That’s correct, for example, a red robot can be plugged into any of the ports in the range port 1 to port 5. One possible reason for the choice (the housing was available before UI was written) is that if the V5 screen is rotated using the settings screen, the red and blue team colored rectangles still align with the red and blue silk screening on the event brain housing. That allows the V5 to be mounted with the USB connector on the left or right side.
You also won’t generally be plugging and unplugging from the V5 event brain, it may not even be visible, so really it doesn’t matter that much.
Considering that we are talking about one single brain per field, would that imply that there will be 4 really long wires that extend to both alliance zones? If the wires break, wouldn’t that lead to cutting the zip ties or tape and then replacing the wires, alongside mounting the wires back to their original positions?
So at worlds, the most likely thing that will happen is a team walks away from the field without unplugging, that may break the connector. We may have spare cables already installed, TBD, but I expect there will also be some repair happening as needed by replacing connectors.
Thinking a bit upon this decision, the few reasons that come to mind is that VEX has a lot of V5 Brains laying around through replacements or the latter. The V5 brains are obviously able to control motors and sensors. With that in mind, it’s not out of the question that there’s a possibility of a season that may:
Have game elements and objects that can actively move based upon how robots interact with the field (like a flag that spins if the robot shoots a ball into a goal)
The field may have sensors integrated in them for automated live scoring, so auton winner can be determined immediately, alongside match scores, drastically reducing time between matches to ultimately make tournaments more efficient overall
Am I thinking about this correctly that 1, 2, or both may happen in future seasons?
To be honest… the only reason why games break easily is terrible design. If the mobile goals these season had the poles screwed in then that fixes the primary problem this season. But the benefits of having automated live scoring far outweighs the negatives, so if a white screen occurs even for the field, they can afford a replay with lots of time to spare.
Unless of course a port dies, in which case I need to go find a new brain, get it all hooked up, knowing Tournament Manager I’ll have to restart Tournament Manager because it won’t be hot swappable, probably have to reboot a Raspberry Pi or two for good measure, and I’m suddenly half an hour behind.
If it absolutely comes to it I can run field control off one of those old handheld competition switches and time everything with a phone (and in fact, I know of an event that had to do that this season). Can’t do that if the field has motors and sensors and can suddenly break in new and exciting ways.
I’m with @AlecMiller here, the build quality of the field this year is already pretty terrible, with everything but the rings breaking with unacceptable frequency. I don’t think adding complex moving parts into the field is doable considering how much the fields are already breaking.
And also, it has been said above that the existing field control system will continue to be legal, which would presumably rule out any game functionality that would require a v5 brain.
