These instructions are for setting up a Windows system to act as a development system for FRC robots using the RobotPy Python libraries.
Our robot and coprocessor (Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano) code is written in Python.
Go to python.org/downloads
Python downloads are available for Python 2 or 3 and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. FOR the 2025 season, download the latest 64-bit package of Python 3.12.
Run the installer, and change the following options:
Check the box to “Add Python 3.* to PATH”
Finish the installation.
The Python libraries we use for the robot are actually written in C++ and are ported over so we can write our code in Python, this means for the libraries to run you must have C++ installed.
Download the Visual C++ Redistributable:
Click here to download link for the redistributable
Install the downloaded package.
Visual Studio Code is a decent, free Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming several languages, including Python.
Download VSCode: code.visualstudio.com and run the installer. The default options are fine.
Start Visual Studio Code
We use Github as a central repository for our code, and Git for version control. This allows us to collaborate and track changes to the code over time for the whole team.
If you don’t already have a GitHub account, create one here: github.com/join
Once you have a username, let the programming mentor know so they can add you to the GitHub repositories and teams.
Download and install Git: git-scm.com/downloads. Check “Use Visual Studio Code as Git’s default editor” and leave all the other options at default. (If the Next button is disabled and you can’t continue, choose Nano instead.
Open a Command Prompt window and type:
git config --global user.email "your email goes here"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global core.editor "code --wait"
If you haven’t already, create an SSH key and link it to your Github account. The instructions are here.