Skip to main content

Programming

Programming your robot is done in Python, specifically version 3.11. You can learn more about Python from their docs.

Each board has an API (Application Programming Interface) which allows its various functionality to be controlled.

Setup​

The kit is automatically initialised when importing the sbot module. The code snipped below will initialise the kit and import all submodules.

from sbot import *

You should only run this once at the start of your file: python will throw an error if sbot is imported multiple times.

tip

Importing sbot will pause execution of the code until the start button is pressed.

Once this is done, the submodules can be used to access and control the robot's hardware. The other pages in these docs cover each module in detail.

Running your code​

Your code needs to be put on a USB drive in a file called robot.py. When connected to the robot, this file will be executed. The file is directly executed off your USB drive, with your drive as the working directory.

tip

If this file is missing or incorrectly named, your robot won't do anything. No log file will be created.

To stop your code running, you can just remove the USB drive. This will also stop the motors and any other peripherals connected to the kit.

You can then reinsert the USB drive into the robot, and it will run your robot.py again (from the start). This allows you to make changes and test them quickly.

Logs​

A log file is saved to your USB so you can see what your robot did, what it didn't do, and any errors it raised. The file is saved to log.txt in the top-level directory of the USB drive.

warning

The latest log is always called log.txt. If the code is re-run the previous log will be renamed with an increasing number suffix.

override.env​

It is possible to change startup parameters by creating a file called override.env (in the same directory as robot.py). Parameters are added to the file with the overridden value, one per line. An example file is provided below:

ENABLE_DEBUG_LOGGING=1
SKIP_WAIT_START=1

ENABLE_DEBUG_LOGGING will run your robot in debug mode, printing more information about what it is doing.

info

Debug mode is very verbose. It will print a lot of information that you may not need.

SKIP_WAIT_START will cause the robot to not wait for the start button when importing sbot, and the function wait_start() (from the utils module) must be called for the robot to wait for the start button. An example of this is provided below:

from sbot import *

# Initialisation and other code to be run immediately goes here

# Code waits for start button here
utils.wait_start()

Included Libraries​

Python comes with plenty of built-in libraries to use. We install some extra ones which may be of use:

tip

If you would like an extra library installed, go and ask a volunteer to see if we can help.