Building a Library of Common Utilities

Technical Java
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So the time has come for me to consider building a library. I was finally set free from a recent project and finally able to turn my eyes towards implementing a feature set in Java 7 for Robotics Programming.

Now I have an idea of what I want to do, and I want to Open Source it (I know it’s required, but I really want to anyway) and leave it open to modification but I would like some input as to what teams view as key features. I usually use IterativeBot so that’s where my mind goes but I want to make it flexible, applicable to CommandBased and even Simple as well. What do you, as a programmer or engineer or mentor think needs to be in a set of utilities for future programmers on a given team.

I am basically looking for ideas on what features to implement in a library to be used in conjunction with WPILib. I know WPILib already has soooo many features, but is there anything you wished it had, or that you see yourself using often and have already made it a small utility?

Thanks for any responses!

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Yeah I will be looking at other libs for inspiration. There are plenty online. Thanks for putting yours here though :smiley: .

I am also looking for thing that people feel needs extra abstraction as well as utilities and extensions upon WPILib, basic or advanced. I have implemented some complex things and don’t mind the challenge.

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How about a class that extends PIDController built specifically for drivetrains? Have instance variables for the drivetrain, left encoder, and right encoder, then do whatever method you want to turn it into PID driving (average the encoders, run each side seperately with error correction if they get out of sync, or whatever else you want to do). It takes a suprising amount of effort to do such a basic task with the current WPILIB. Even better would be if you could extend PIDSubsystem using this special controller.

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That is a neat idea! I will look into it. I had seen some examples but I think it would be a good idea to implement it.

I kind of want to make this a community thing (though that may be unlikely since everyone seems to like their personal libs) but I want to make a pretty decent, maybe expansive extension of WPILib with the introduction of Java 7 in 2015.

Thanks again!