Session 0.2 – Setup your Laptop*

*Optional – For those bringing their own computer

Reminder: This page (and really this whole website) is mainly for the Level 1 Programming track. This does not apply to those in the CAD course and is not directly aimed at the Level 2 Programming group, although they can certainly use this information if it is helpful

For those who are bringing their own laptop or their team’s laptop, this page is intended to help you make sure it is set up and ready for camp in-advance of the first session.

If you are not bringing your own laptop to Level 1, do not worry, we will have some laptops already setup with the necessary software.

I recorded this video while I was updating an old laptop to have it ready for camp, it briefly covers the process of updating an old laptop that has been used for FRC before:

The video covers deleting the old installation of WPILIB/VS Code if needed. If you are working with a clean/new laptop obviously you won’t need to do that step.

Essentially like in the video you just need to step through the installation instructions from the docs pages, the main two that you typically need every year are

If you have both of those things setup on your laptop with the latest 2025 versions then you should be all set for programming camp.

Do I need to bring my own laptop or my team’s laptop?

This is up to you, if you have a decent Windows 10 or Windows 11 laptop you want to use, it might be nice to have your code examples with you to bring home after camp. However you can always email yourself your code or save it by other means as well. If the team has a good laptop available, it might be better than the spares I have here, as some of these are 10+ years old…

So it’s optional, not required, but if you do plan to bring your own or your team’s laptop please go through the above steps to ensure its FRC software is up-to-date and ready for camp.

See you soon!

Published @ June 4, 2025 2:34 am