Announcing Robolog: A Logging and Troubleshooting System for FRC Robots

Technical Programming
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Just in time for 2016’s kickoff, FRC Team 4918 and Juxtapose Technologies are proud to present Robolog, a FRC logging, robot analysis, and troubleshooting system.

What is Robolog?
Robolog is a set of two LabVIEW VI files that are placed inside of a small loop in a LabVIEW dashboard project. The first file, Robolog.vi, logs every single output from the RoboRIO every 100 milliseconds and saves it as RFC 4627 JSON. The second file, RL Custom Data.vi, is pretty self explanatory. It allows you to log an unlimited amount of custom variables straight from your robot. Because everything is handled through the Dashboard, Robolog is technically compatible with LabVIEW, C++, and Java.

Why is Robolog better than FIRST’s logging system?
Robolog has two main advantages over FIRST’s traditional logging system. The first (no pun intended) major advantage of Robolog is how customizable the system is. FIRST’s logging system built into the driver station does not allow the use of custom variables or logging intervals, leaving your team with only the information FIRST gives you. With the ability to use custom variables comes the power of diagnosing potential issues with your robot much faster, saving your team valuable time between matches.

The second major advantage of Robolog is its intuitive web panel (which is currently in a closed alpha being tested by a few teams that volunteered to test). The Robolog web panel is based off of CKAN, the world’s leading open source data platform. CKAN is used by organizations such as data.gov.

Juxtapose Technologies, a local studio, is also working with us to develop mobile applications for Robolog, that’ll allow you to diagnose issues with your robot easily from your smartphone or tablet. If your team is interested in participating in the panel’s closed alpha, please shoot me a private message or email.

Downloading and Installing
Robolog is currently in its Alpha phase, so don’t expect it to be perfectly bug free right away. All of the information on downloading and installing Robolog can be found on its GitHub page http://juxtapose-technologies.github.io/Robolog/

(Disclosure: I am one of the co-owners of Juxtapose, just in case any of you were curious)

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This sounds cool. There is a similar function, by the way, which was released a few years ago but doesn’t get discussed much.

The default dashboard has its own logging feature, independent from the DS logs. It is for recording dashboard data and video. The green arrow, red rectangle and red circle are the controls for this feature.

If you click the red circle, the dashboard will start recording to an AVI and a binary file. Green arrow opens a floating window for selecting a log file, choosing playback speed, a scrub slider, and some rename/delete options. Red square stops both recording and playback. The data plays back into the original dashboard. It isn’t stored in JSON, but the source is provided.

The whole point of this feature was to give teams more data to analyze what happened following a match. But we didn’t want to turn it on by default because very low-end laptops weren’t always up to the task.

Anyway, whether logging on the robot or the DS, data about the robot’s performance is key to good design iteration and performance. So, good to see additional options for logging.

Greg McKaskle