Common Sense

Authors: Armaan, Aditi

Date: 7/12/23

"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire

• Unfortunatly the common sense required to survive in robotics is simultaneously everpresent in society yet incredibly specific.

• This guide will provide a set guidelines, common sense for all robotics members to help them survive

Mech

• Reach out to a mech person

Electrical

• Reach out to a electrical person

Tech

How to be a good programmer

• Commit and push you code before you leave or whenever you make important changes

  • If you do not push code before leaving, no one else will be able to access it and they will have to redo all of your work
  • Its also really annoying
  • Pushing also makes debugging easier

• Do not implement any infinite loops

  • This is annoying to debug and will render the robot non-functional
  • while(true){}

• Do not reference robot specific or game specific constants in MustangLib

  • It traumatizes the future tech leads

• If you yourself begin referring to your code as sketchy, scuffed or anything else similar, there are probably better ways to solve the problem

  • Disregard this rule at competitions

• Do not get distracted by the many VSCode extensions that you have

How to test code efficiently

• Deploy code after saving all of your changes and make sure that you are connected to the correct robot

• Clear the area around the robot

• Make sure the battery is still good and strapped down

  • See Robot Movement Is Jerky

• Gather as much data as possible during testing to accelerate debugging

  • Use breakpoints
  • Track values through glass
  • Take a video to review what went wrong

How to not become a casualty or cause additonal casualties

• Do not remain within reach of the robot while it is enabled especially if the code is untested

  • A notable example of this is the arm on the 2023 robot.
    • During the initial stages, the arm often spun rapidly and smashed itself into the ground

• If something is excessively hot or you can smell electrical smoke, either call an electrical or mech member and explain the problem

  • If it is on fire get help fast

• In case of injury, judge the severity and receive first aid as necessary

• Keep the robot away from glass and walls

  • We have accidentally scuffed and punctured the walls. Please avoid doing so.

• Do not drive towards people

• If the robot is misbehaving PRESS ENTER.

• If you are testing code always be ready to hit enter and disable the robot

• Tell people before you enable to robot, especially if you are running auton