Part #8: Software Spills | SUMMER ROBOTICS: Tips and Tricks for Your Team

We are continuing on this week with tips about building your robot and moving on to software. You'll of course have to program the robot to do its stuff, but that can be quite tricky. Our team uses Android Studio, just one of the platforms that are allowed for FTC competition. Programming can be hard to start on, especially if you've never had a high-level computer science of programming class yet, but there are plenty of ways to still get your robot programmed, and as always, the more you practice the better and faster you'll be at it.

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Tip #1: Research, Research, Research

Yes, this keeps popping up in our list of tips, but the importance of research is no joke. We started out with almost zero programming experience on our team, but with some online classes for java coding, YouTube videos from other FTC teams, and resources from FIRST and all over the internet, we were able to get our programming started. Other FTC teams have all started out as rookies, and they have gotten better and better each season. Look at other team's websites and YouTube channels for resources on how to start programming or little tips about working with software (like our blog!). We learned so much from the online resources from other teams, and you can really learn most of what you need to know about software with a couple Google searches, but the rest just comes with time and experience.

Tip #2: Master the basics

With programming, you can't get very far if you don't know the basics (like syntax), so it's very important to get to know your language before you start trying to make your robot do cool stuff. This is where a computer science class might help. If someone on your team already knows the language you are working with, have them teach everyone the basics. If you're all beginners, then try an online course to teach you the basics (that's what we did). Make sure to have your entire team know a little bit about coding and using the software so that anyone can help to debug later when you're testing your code. Once you've mastered the basics, then you can start making complicated algorithms that make your robot more functional and efficient. When you're just starting out, though, keep to the simple stuff and work on the complicated stuff later.

Tip #3: Ask mentors or find a mentor

While online resources are great and can teach you a lot, they can't always help to fix your problems as you come across them. That's why it's great to know someone (even if they aren't on your team) like a fellow student or a teacher who knows your coding language really well. You can always ask them to come and look at your code to debug or help you figure out how you'd want to write the code to make the robot do a certain action. Remember, the more resources you have, the better you can learn from them and be able to code without help.

Tip #4: Understand what you're writing

There are tons of pre-written code segments on the internet that you can use for FTC, and of course you should use them, but make sure you know exactly what it's doing. This is important for debugging and explaining your code to others. If you just copied and pasted a chunk of code into your program, and have no idea what it does, how are you going to fix the code if something doesn't work right on the robot. You should always have a vague idea of what each line of code does to prevent this sort of situation. If you find a code template online, but you can't understand what it's doing, it might be a good idea to find a different version of the code that makes more sense to you. And don't forget, the judges at competition can ask you to explain your code, so be prepared!

Tip #5: Stay organized

The last thing you need is to loose the new section of code you spent weeks writing and testing right before the competition because you forgot to paste it into your driver station phone. Keep all your code segments in the same spot, even if that means putting it into a text document on a thumb drive. You loose your code, you loose your robot. The robot can't do anything without a program, and nobody wants to waste the time redoing their code. On that note, it's also a good idea to keep a backup of your code in a text document like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, just in case of some technology glitch.

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Be on the lookout for our next blog post with more tips and tricks next week about building an impressive and effective engineering notebook. We hope you enjoy this SUMMER ROBOTICS series and put some of these tips to good use with your FTC team.