AnalogChannel as both an accumulator AND a normal input?

[Jared Russell]

Can this be done?

In other words, the Gyro class uses an accumulator channel and does not give me a public method to get the instantaneous reading from the sensor. Is this because an input can be either an instantaneous read OR an accumulator, or is it just a WPILib design issue?

Thanks!

[MattD]

You should be able to do this. The Gyro class has a constructor that accepts an existing AnalogChannel object.

/**
 * Gyro constructor with a precreated analog channel object.
 * Use this constructor when the analog channel needs to be shared. There
 * is no reference counting when an AnalogChannel is passed to the gyro.
 * @param channel The AnalogChannel object that the gyro is connected to.
 */
Gyro::Gyro(AnalogChannel *channel)

You can create an AnalogChannel and use the standard methods on it, while using the accumulator information via the Gyro class at the same time.

AnalogChannel *channel = new AnalogChannel(1);
Gyro *gyro = new Gyro(channel);

float value = channel->GetVoltage();
float angle = gyro->GetAngle();

Alternatively, you could modify the Gyro class to provide access to this information.

[jbobj]

Originally Posted by MattD

You can create an AnalogChannel and use the standard methods on it, while using the accumulator information via the Gyro class at the same time.

AnalogChannel *channel = new AnalogChannel(1);
Gyro *gyro = new Gyro(channel);

float value = channel->GetVoltage();
float angle = gyro->GetAngle();

Alternatively, you could modify the Gyro class to provide access to this information.

If this is so, and I want to get the Degrees per Second from the Gyro, does this line of code within the Gyro class do that? m_analog is the AnalogChannel within the Gyro class, and voltsPerDegreePerSecond is a constant I see in there.

return m_voltsPerDegreePerSecond*m_analog->GetVoltage();