Software Notes

Learning Java

Blue Pelican.

Software Notes

My software is based on Team 254's. This allows me to borrow techniques and constructs from them. For example:

• Actions example
• Their implementation of State machines example
• Poses, Rotations and Transforms
• Trajectories
• InterpolatingTreeMaps example

Following their model also helps with collaboration - Team 195 also follows this model. This means that we can more easily collaborate and share ideas, methodologies, and sometimes even full autonomouses.

For most function of the robot, I stick to a pretty fundamental set of language features. There are a couple of places I do some whacky inheritance magic or use very language specific features but I try and keep that out of the core of the robot code.

Here's a list of important language features used:

• Inheritance
• Lambdas

Here's a list of software constructs used:

• Singletons
• State Machines

Here's an explanation of some Aces High constructs used:

• Actions
• Telemetry Structure
• Multithreading with Loopers/Loopables
• Poses, Rotations, and Transforms
• Trajectories

Variable Naming Conventions

k*** (i.e. kDriveWheelTrackWidthInches): Final constants, especially those found in the Constants.java file
m*** (i.e. mPathFollower): Private instance variables

Other notes

• I've standardized on using Hz everywhere.
• Prefer using Interrupt Loopers. Thread.sleep() isn't the best on the RIO and the InterruptLooper uses a Notifier based on triggers or 'notifications' from the FPGA
• Prefer using AcesRobotStatus.getFPGATimestamp() rather than Timer.getFPGATimestamp() as AcesRobotStatus will automatically pick the most appropriate timesource when running on the RIO, in a unit test, or on a co-processor
• SparkMax subsystems were autogenerated this year. There was a lot of redundant code so to increase consistency they were moved to being generated from a template.