Due to the time nessecarry to program an efficient odometry program from scratch, I know many teams will use an odometry template so they can have a program finished sooner. I would like to program my own odometry algorithim because I want to know what everything does and how it works. However, my first competition is in a month and We still need to build our robot (We have a complete CAD of it, so it should ony take about a week or so)
Are there any advantages/disadvantages to a custom odometry program compared to a template (assuming I understand all of the code, math, and logic behind it?)
since it seems many people have left their opinions, and not so much explaining why they believe what they do. I’d like to share why I believe using a template is more time efficient.
I learned how to code midway through last season out of necessity, and before then had only tinkered with custom PID and odometry, but I opted to use a template for the sake of minimizing how much time I spent on the code Vs my robot and its notebook, and I’m not saying I did not bother to learn the basics of PID and odometry, I heavily believe in understanding how things work before using them, and if you look at some code and think “what am I looking at” custom templates provide that “aha so that’s what this does!”
the way I see it is that using a custom Template made by yourself or teammates grants far more libertys in how your robot behaves, as its made for YOUR team and how they prefer things to work, vs a public template (such as JAR,Lemlib,and the Power beans template) which were originally made for the creators to work in a way that was simple not just for them, but for the masses. which means that there are certain limitation in what they can do opposed to simply writing the program to perform the features that suit your specific needs.
I hope more people can share their opinions as that is what truely benefits these online surveys
Just gonna say, I wouldn’t have left my opinion in words without @stromboli_499A saying all that, thanks!
I understand that using a template is SO much more time efficient and easier, but I didn’t want that to be my general goal when I started robotics- I wanted to be able to learn more from it. Now, this doesn’t mean that you SHOULDN’T use an odometry template, you can use it for your first couple tries, and when things slow down a little bit, then you can finally try out odometry.
Now, a lot of robotics and code is trial and error, so it’ll take a bit of trying and then failing but at one point you’ll be able to finally finish and think " I did this" and it really feels good to say.
Now, putting into consideration that the person understand the code, math, and logic behind it-
It’s not necessary to make a WHOLE NEW thing of code, you can use a template and adjust it to your needs and such; because you are still learning from that part.
I think 50/50 for me in general though.
Hear me out! It is possible but it would be useless to have a half functioning odometry plus there is a vex forum about this the only problem is that in blocks motion tracking is impossible and having a half functioning code of odometry with no motion tracking is bad and doesn’t make sense unless you want something for your notebook. Plus you would just have 2 useless odometery wheels on your robot to add weight. Hope this explained your question!