Change Release Notes
"Now 37% Fewer WTFs Per Minute!"
Grab a coffee, tighten your servo screws, and maybe hold onto something stable - because this release is packed with performance boosts, stability upgrades, user-interface polish, and even a few "the robots won’t riot today" quality-of-life improvements.
Here's a few highlights that are covered below:
- EZB broadcasts now auto-populate connection dropdowns. This means that all EZB's on the network will automatically display in the connection control address box without needing to use the scan button.
- Added a robot skill search option in the "add robot skill" window. You can now search for robot skills based on keyword, name, etc.. This makes it much easier to find what you're looking for.
Let’s dive in!
Major Performance Wins
Camera Canvas Rewritten for Speed Your camera feed now processes 10-20× fewer cycles per frame. Translation: your CPU can go back to doing literally anything else.
Speech Engine Supercharged Faster, more stable, and less likely to sound like it’s gargling bits.
Robot Skill Icons Optimized Your Add robot skill window now loads smoother than a fresh jar of peanut butter.
EZB Emulator: Faster & Safer Stability improvements for those of you who enjoy testing your robots without risking your fingers.
Script Executors Revved Up Both the JavaScript and Python engines got performance and stability upgrades. More speed = fewer excuses for slow scripts.
Smarter Searching
No More Duplicate Robot Skills in Search We stopped searching the "Recent" tab to prevent déjà vu.
Search Results Alphabetically Ordered Your eyes can finally relax.
Add robot skill Window Search Overhaul Now includes a dedicated "Search" tab that finds robot skills matching your text, fast.
Search Performance Boosted Across the Board Because waiting is for firmware from 1993.
Quality-of-Life Improvements
Improved robot skill Installer Faster downloads, fewer hiccups, more happy robots.
Tool Tip Formatting Upgrade ControlCommand tooltips and copy-to-clipboard text are now clean, tidy, and not yelling at you.
Popup Dropdown Behaves Like a Real UI Element The dropdown used across robot skills:
- closes when ESC is pressed
- no longer allows duplicates
- basically acts civilized
New Control Commands for Camera Device & Notes Skills All documented. Manuals updated. No treasure map required.
Snapshot Saving & Video Frame Fixes The camera skill remembers how to save images correctly again. We politely reminded it of its job.
Cheat Sheet Improvements
- Hovering over a ControlCommand now shows return values, parameter types, descriptions, and examples.
- Default
boolparameter values now display in lowercase (true|false) as nature intended.
EZ-B Communication Improvements (Thread-Safe Edition)
These changes make the comm layer more stable, predictable, and generally less "hold my beer":
- Full thread-safe updates using
Interlocked.Exchange. - Logging from multiple threads is now safe and won’t scream into the void.
IsDisposingguard added to prevent late-night crashes._tcpServerproperly nulled on dispose.- Serial error handler properly detached before disposal.
- Removed unnecessary array copy in TCP send.
- EZB broadcasts now auto-populate connection dropdowns.
- Connection Skill now defaults to 192.168.1.1:23 instead of an existential blank string.
Basically: the comm stack is now less chaos and more engineering.
Unhandled Exception System: Now Actually Handles Them
Centralized the EZB/CEF cleanup logic and made the unhandled exception guard thread-safe.
Highlights:
- CEF temp folder finally gets deleted instead of becoming a collector’s item every run.
- Exceptions now flow through WinForms properly thanks to early
Application.SetUnhandledExceptionMode.
Subscription, Manager, and UI Improvements
- Better subscription syncing.
- More stable robot skill manager.
- Several UI performance enhancements sprinkled throughout ARC like confetti.
Other Treats
- Updated latest Chromium, buffers, JSON converters, and other libraries.
- Preparing for the next ARC release (yes, already).
- Multiple under-the-hood stability improvements across the board.
This release focuses heavily on performance, stability, and refining the day-to-day experience inside ARC. The goal: give you faster robots, happier workflows, and fewer moments where you question your life choices while staring at a spinning cursor.
ARC Downloads
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- Includes one free 3rd party plugin robot skill per project
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For schools, personal use & organizations. This edition is updated every 6-12 months.
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Only $8.99/mo
- 2 or more PCs simultaneously
- Includes unlimited skills
- Cloud backup
- And much more
Experience the latest features and bug fixes weekly. A Pro subscription is required to use this edition.
Runtime
Free
- Load and run any ARC project
- Operates in read-only mode
- Unlimited robot skills
- Early access fixes & features
Have you finished programming your robot? Use this to run existing ARC projects for free*.
- Minimum requirements are Windows 10 or higher with 2+gb ram and 500+MB free space.
- Recommended requirements are Windows 10 or higher with 8+gb ram and 1000+MB free space.
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- ARC Free known-issues can be viewed by clicking here.
- Get more information about each ARC edition by clicking here.
- See what's new in the latest versions with Release notes.
Compare Editions
| Feature | ARC FREE |
ARC PRO |
|---|---|---|
| Get ARC for Free | View Plans | |
| Usage | Personal DIY Education |
Personal DIY Education Business |
| Early access to new features & fixes | Yes | |
| Simultaneous microcontroller connections* | 1 | 255 |
| Robot skills* | 20 | Unlimited |
| Skill Store plugins* | 1 | Unlimited |
| Cognitive services usage** | 10/day | 6,000/day |
| Auto-positions gait actions* | 40 | Unlimited |
| Speech recongition phrases* | 10 | Unlimited |
| Camera devices* | 1 | Unlimited |
| Vision resolution | max 320x240 | Unlimited |
| Interface builder* | 2 | Unlimited |
| Cloud project size | 128 MB | |
| Cloud project revision history | Yes | |
| Create Exosphere requests | 50/month | |
| Exosphere API access | Contact Us | |
| Volume license discounts | Contact Us | |
| Get ARC for Free | View Plans |
** 1,000 per cognitive type (vision recognition, speech recognition, face detection, sentiment, text recognition, emotion detection, azure text to speech)
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Yes! thank you! Thank You! My life really needs fewer WTFs in it. I'm downloading now. Looking forward to experiencing Nirvana. love
Haha that is a funny release note. There’s lots of goodies in this update. I’ve been enjoying it. Many of them you don’t notice, they just work. Stability stuff.
the auto discovery of ezb is cool. And searching for robot skills is cool because I always forget where they are - given that there’s so many now
It still does the old EZ scripts right? Im so old school
@DJ, I always appreacheate these updates. I've got this latest one installed and all seems well. I haven't tried the new search functions or looked into the auto populate but I'll be using them soon for sure.
@RoboHappy, Yes, I can confirm that EZ Script is still able to be used to write scripts and use in your project. They did say it wasn't going to be updated anymore. What it is, is what it is I guess.
An EZB emulator could be a killer. I broke my robot's arm because of an unexpected movement during startup... Or am I confusing it with a simulator?