I am a high school robotics teacher with 2 classes of 15 students each. I would like to transition to using only control hubs for all my robotics challenges, but I need a way to let each student log in to onBotJava and see/upload only their code and opModes.
Android studio is an option, but uploading and testing is much slower this way… I would be much more likely to use control hubs if OnBotJava had a multiple account support. Is this in the works at all?
No, not at this time. We do not have “accounts” with the control hub environments, the control hub is an open environment simply protected by a wifi password.
-Danny
Is this something I could submit to a feature request space? If so, where would I do that?
Here’s a “clunky” way to achieve what you want, with OnBot Java. The Control Hub (or RC phone) does support mutiple Wi-Fi connections to student laptops. And they can all access the FTC programming interface at the same time. Naturally each student would include their own personal name in each OpMode filename.
A problem arises when only one student is ready to test. They click “Build Everything”, but this requires that all OpModes are ready to build successfully. Any build failure prevents testing.
So you could allow Build attempts only at designated intervals or deadlines, when all students should be ready.
Or allow Building anytime, but recognize that other students’ OpModes will be in-process and thus not ready to build.
In the latter case, the other students would need to “comment out” their OpModes (CTRL-A, CTRL-/), or Download (to their own laptop) and Delete. After the Build Everything succeeds, those incomplete OpModes can be reinstated with (CTRL-A, CTRL-/) or Upload. The built OpModes are now available on the Driver Station device for testing, independent of continued programming.
Yes, clunky, but the disable/enable steps are actually very fast – just a few keystrokes or clicks.
This does not achieve your goal of separate accounts. Namely, students would be able to see or copy each other’s OpModes.
If you would consider FTC Blocks as a alternate programming tool, this shared-RC concept works much better. Each student works in their self-named OpMode. Clicking “Save OpMode” has no effect on other OpModes in process. Any saved OpMode can be selected and run on the Driver Station device.
I regularly use this shared Blocks approach, for training sessions where students and laptops outnumber robot testbeds. Works well.
Same! Multiple students program their own OpModes, and then we test each one while other students are modifying their programs.