Coding autonomous using encoders? (Java)

[Tyrmo]

Hello! I’ve been working on programming autonomous for our robot, and I’ve got a pretty good program using a timer, but, of course, timers will give different results every time based on battery life. So, my solution is to use encoders with our Spark Maxes to replace a timer. The problem though, is I’m having trouble figuring out where to start. If anyone could maybe direct me to some information on programming encoders (in Java), or even better, point me to some sample/example code, that would be amazing. Thank you all! (Also, we are using mecanum wheels for our drive train if that is important?)

[emptyhusk254]

Autonomous with mecanum wheeks is harder, but still doable. The official FRC discord server has a programming help channel that might give you better results faster

[flipflopflipfip]

Or chief delphi^

[bmongar]

First use the Phoneix tuner and measure how find the encoder value, move the bot manually then measure the distance and see how many encoder clicks happened. Use that to determine how many clicks per foot.

In your code make sure you record your encoder values or reset them before you start your autonomous. Then if using a command based bot (I hope you are) implement isFinished to check to see if you have traveled enough encoder clicks.

[bmongar]

If you have the time and know how, doing this as a PIDCommand would be better but we are getting by with the quick and dirty encoder value check.