State the smartphone support boundary and remove approved-device framing - #427
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miriamsr wants to merge 12 commits into
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State the smartphone support boundary and remove approved-device framing#427miriamsr wants to merge 12 commits into
miriamsr wants to merge 12 commits into
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Remove references to particular Android smartphone models (Moto E4/E5, Moto G, ZTE, and derived device names such as motog-002 and XT1063_864b) throughout the docs, pointing readers at the Competition Manual for the current approved-hardware list instead. Rename the two image files whose names carried a model number. Where a page mentions both a Hub and a phone, put the Control Hub or Driver Hub first: reorder the Wi-Fi Technology page so Wireless Access Point precedes Wi-Fi Direct Group Owner, flip device pairs in Self Inspect, VisionPortal Previews, firmware/app update pages, the wiring guide, and myBlocks, and lead with the Control Hub in the UVC camera and Program & Manage network pages.
Teams may use any Android device that works, so drop the language that framed phones as drawn from a restricted list: "approved", "FIRST-approved", "FTC-approved", "legal", and "select Android smartphones", along with the pointers to the Competition Manual's device list and the R704/R901 rule citations. Rewrites the Driver Hub vs SmartPhone tech tip's cons so they rest on manufacturer support lifecycles rather than on the shrinking approved list, and drops the wifi-channel-planning note about approved hardware changing over time. Device *naming* rules are unchanged and remain cited. Restrictions on other hardware (batteries, motors, gamepads, grounding cables, power distribution) are untouched.
Smartphones remain legal for competition use under the upcoming rules change, but they are not officially supported: teams who use one are responsible for all of their own testing and troubleshooting. Add that support boundary at the points where a team picks a device -- the control system intro, Using Your Android Device, Driver Station components, Required Materials, phone pairing, the Managing a Smartphone RC / Driver Hub pages, the two-smartphone configuration section, the dual Expansion Hub setup, and the Driver Hub vs SmartPhone tech tip.
zachwaffle4
suggested changes
Aug 6, 2026
Co-authored-by: Zach Harel <zach.harel42@gmail.com>
texasdiaz
added a commit
that referenced
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Aug 17, 2026
* Convert legacy Tech Tips to the new per-page format The Tech Tips landing page held 39 "Legacy" Tech Tips in collapsible dropdowns, each titled by its Team E-mail Blast publication date, alongside two "Updated" Tech Tips that had their own pages. Convert all 39 legacy dropdowns into 18 standalone pages, combining Tech Tips that covered the same subject so a topic reads start to finish in one place (the three-part Wi-Fi Bands and Battery Voltage Sag series, the two Wi-Fi monitoring tips, the two Driver Hub tips, and so on). Drop the "Updated" and "Legacy" framing from the landing page, which is now a set of toctrees grouped by subject. Move dc-motor-curve.* out of the shared tech_tips/images/ folder into a per-page images/ folder next to the page that uses it, per the folder-per-topic pattern. The Competition Manual links directly to the #calculatepower anchor on tech-tips.html. That anchor and #powercalculator are retained on the landing page in a short "Moved Tech Tips" section pointing at the new page, so the existing Competition Manual link keeps resolving. The section can be removed once the manual is updated. The "Driver Hub or Smartphone?" tip carries the corrected smartphone support language from PR #427 rather than the original "approved device" framing. Resolves #385 * Keep the retained-anchor comment out of the spell checker cspell flagged the bare word calculatepower in the RST comment explaining why the Moved Tech Tips section exists. Write the anchor as a URL in angle brackets instead, which the existing <...> entry in cspell.json's ignoreRegExpList already covers, and which reads more usefully anyway. The .. _calculatepower: / .. _powercalculator: label targets themselves were never flagged - the first ignoreRegExpList entry covers those lines. --------- Co-authored-by: Danny Diaz <texasdiaz@gmail.com>
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Summary
Updates the docs to match the rules change that removes all restrictions on
which Android devices a team may use as a Robot Controller or Driver Station.
There is no approved-device list any more, so the docs should stop framing
phones in terms of approval, legality, or a curated selection. What replaces
that framing is the support boundary: smartphones are legal to use in
competition, but a team who uses one is responsible for all of their own
testing and troubleshooting. Only the REV Control Hub and the REV Driver Hub
are officially supported.
What changed
Android device" language and the pointers to a Competition Manual device
list, since no such list exists now.
.. important::notes on thepages where a reader is most likely to be choosing or setting up a phone,
saying plainly that phones are legal but unsupported.
and the Hub second now do the reverse, with phone-specific steps kept as the
secondary path rather than removed.
(Moto E4, Moto E5, and similar) that only made sense when a fixed device list
existed. Two screenshots were renamed to generic filenames to match:
motoe5.png→android-smartphone.png, and040-RC-preview-2-webcams-Moto-e4.png→040-RC-preview-2-webcams.png.Out of scope
Device naming rules (
<team number>-RC/-DS) are unaffected and stillapply. Restrictions on other hardware — batteries, motors, servos, gamepads,
grounding cables, power distribution — are unrelated to this change, so
"approved" language about those is deliberately left in place.
Note for reviewers
This will conflict with #419 (site-wide glossary), which wraps some of the same
sentences in
:term:markup. Whichever merges second will need astraightforward conflict resolution — I'll handle it on whichever branch lands
later.