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Release plan #873

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tiestapistics opened this issue Jul 19, 2019 · 10 comments
Closed

Release plan #873

tiestapistics opened this issue Jul 19, 2019 · 10 comments
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@tiestapistics
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Hi,

is there already a plan for a next release? At the beginning of August the FIRST LEGO League competition will start in Europe. So it would be important to know when we can expect certain things like a try/catch block to be implemented by then.

The following information is currently available on the https://makecode.mindstorms.com/ website:
LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 version: 1.0.11
Microsoft MakeCode version: 4.0.9

MakeCode version 4.0.9 is from September 26, 2018 and there is already version 5.18.9 available. And pxt-ev3 version 1.0.11 is now already half a year old without updates. And even on the site https://makecode.mindstorms.com/beta there are no new versions.

For FLL it would be desirable if there were regular releases and a release plan. At least some information about the future of the project would be desirable.
@abchatra
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abchatra commented Aug 6, 2019

We release once a year release on many editors. For example: microbit. This is mostly to keep the editor stable for teachers. We strive for backward compat as well. You can take dependency on the current editor and need not wait for the new editor. All features will continue to work on new release as well.

Try\catch is brand new feature and will like have lot of bugs. We will wait for it to stabilize before shipping.

Next release for ev3 will be by end of this year. There is no fixed timeframe yet.

@abchatra abchatra closed this as completed Aug 6, 2019
@ghost
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ghost commented Aug 22, 2019

MakeCode Mindstorms is pretty much unusable for FLL basic file management capabilities on the brick need to be addressed, as well as how the program you download starts running immediately when you drag it to the brick.

@abchatra
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Running immediately is by design (this gives instant gratification to students). All our editors do that. Can you explain why is it undesirable for your scenario?

@abchatra
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There are always events one could use (like on button pressed) to control the invocation of your code.

@ghost
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ghost commented Aug 27, 2019

@abchatra Thanks for the idea and the response. So, for your question as to why we don't want the program to execute immediately, the simple answer is that it is not helpful.

For FLL, the robot has to run any number of programs during a match. We've had up to 6 programs to make the robot move and do missions (we call these sorties). When the file gets dragged to the robot, having it execute the downloaded program immediately is incredibly annoying. My expectation would be that MakeCode would essentially allow the brick to operate like it does when using EV3-G (LabView), which means you initiate programs from the brick or you create a master program that has EV3 brick button or touch sensor triggers to initiate the other programs.

What you have done is awesome, so please don't take any of this as a complaint or criticism. It is amazing how much is possible with MakeCode Mindstorms.

I'll add this as an issue later, but my team just tried testing the motors to see if they had precision stop control. Even with a motor reset and setting the brake, my team couldn't get the motors to turn 500 deg (+/- 1-2 deg) consistently with set of serial move blocks. The degrees turned was all over the place (+/- 30 deg). My team was also unable to use the motor degrees read out in order to program a while loop to ramp the motor speed based on the degrees of rotation. The read out motor rotation in degrees worked, but using it in the While-do conditional resulted in nothing executing. Even passing it to another variable resulted in a nothing.

So, while the top level file managment and program initiation issues can be worked around (we just have to hit cancel after dragging a program to the brick), there seem to be much bigger issues that my team thinks these issues will prevent them from being able to use MakeCode Mindstorms effectively in an FLL tournament.

@abchatra
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@technonati Thanks for the feedback. I understand why it is desirable for FLL to have file system. .

MakeCode is designed to lower the friction in physical computing. Instant gratification is part of it. As soon as you drag the file into the hardware it runs without the need for user to do any action. This is great for novice user. Unfornately this is not so great for advanced or users migrating from existing platform such as lab view. We need to see how to balance the expectations. Again thanks for the feedback here.

Even with a motor reset and setting the brake, my team couldn't get the motors to turn 500 deg (+/- 1-2 deg) consistently with set of serial move blocks.
Please file a issue for this with a repro (share link would be great). We should be able to address this .

@pelikhan

@pelikhan
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@Technonati we have pushed a number of fixes on https://makecode.mindstorms.com/beta . Please try them out.

  • "storage" extension to write files
  • better gyro calibration
  • fixes to tank blocks
  • fixes to handling of escape button, etc..

@ghost
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ghost commented Aug 30, 2019 via email

@pelikhan
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pelikhan commented Aug 30, 2019 via email

@ghost
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ghost commented Sep 1, 2019 via email

This was referenced Mar 5, 2020
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@pelikhan @abchatra @tiestapistics