[PhilBot]

Measuring time in autonomous should be easy.

This is my first year using Java for FRC and it surprised me that it wasn't the case.

1: The sample "Getting Started" code uses loop counters to measure time... Really?

2: The description for the Timer class is simply wrong... it would lead you to believe that getMatchTime returns elapsed seconds... but it doesn't , it returns the countdown clock... which is extremely counter intuitive.

Plus, it only returns a valid time when running in "Practice" mode on the Driver Station. Nothing in pure Auto or Teleop modes.

The library getMatchTime() comment reads:

* This returns the time since the enable
* signal sent from the Driver Station At the beginning of autonomous, the
* time is reset to 0.0 seconds At the beginning of teleop, the time is reset
* to +15.0 seconds If the robot is disabled, this returns 0.0 seconds

I had to ultimately display the returned time on the dashboard to see why my code wasn't working. In Auto it starts at 15 and counts down.

So, it would appear that if I want a generic timer that I can reset to zero in each mode, I need to use getFPGATimestamp() to get a hardware time, and great my own "ElapsedTime class to be able to tell how long I've been running.

Simple enough now I know I need to do it, but really.......
Not making it easy for beginners.