Encoder getRate question

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by AsianRookie

1)Am I using the setDistancePerPulse() correctly?

Nope. DistancePerPulse is the distance in units that your robot travels, per pulse. So what you need to do is take the circumference of your wheels and divide that by the resolution of your encoder (usually 360 or 250) to give you the distance that your robot will travel forward for every "pulse" of the encoder.

So if you're using 6" wheels, that would give you a circumference of ~18.85 inches. For every turn of your robot's wheels, your robot will travel roughly that distance. So you take the number of pulses per revolution of the encoder, and divide 18.849556 by that number, to give you the distance per pulse of the encoder.

I don't think gear ratio factors into it, since I'm 99% sure the encoder shaft is linked to the output shaft rather than the input gears. This can be fairly trivially tested though I suppose. Or just look up the gearbox manual.