Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Byron
Does anyone know if it would be possible to program the NI CRIO using Python programming language? ( www.python.org) I personally am a fan of labview, but many other memebers of the team prefer text-based programming. Of the different text-based programming languages avalible, Python is a favorite, and it's wide range of use and extension modules have led us to believe that programming our robot with it would be possible. Assuming it's possible, are there any already made Python modules for FRC? |
There is currently no support in place for a python user.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no legal or technical reason that would preclude you from doing so. However, it would certainly require some doing and would require extensive C++ and python experience. If you are looking to do this because python is 'easier', turn back now. If you are doing this to score major geek points, be warned that upon success you will be overwhelmed with the downsides of awesomeness: Prepare yourself to fend off the fan(boy/girl)s.
The Java and C++ (and LV??) environments make calls into a unified block that handles the 'sacred' stuff, such as FPGA and field comm. Broadly (and slightly incorrectly) speaking, you could consider this unified block to be a dll or driver. Your python library would need to "simply" hook into this. No "cRIO assembly" required
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My secret hope is that the community will develop a (e.g.) python environment next summer. It isn't that I think python is better or worse than any of the other options, it is that I think it would be an amazing project with lots of community enhancing hidden benefits.