Hello,
After reading the latest team blast and reading the sneak peek, I was wondering what the likelyhood that new hardware released for the 2019 season like the Spark Max motor controllers would be supported. I get that they are not even out yet, and neither is the API. Also, I am not asking for an ETA or anything, I am just trying to understand the process of including new hardware as our team lays out our roadmap for the season.
Thanks,
R^2
Yes, REV will support the products they release.
Given the subforum I think he’s asking if there’s going to be Python support for the Spark Max.
Dur… reading is hard, even for me… especially for me.
I don’t believe REV will have direct support for this but I don’t know why Python wouldn’t work with it as you can send PWM signals to it so it can work like any other controller. Beyond that, someone would need to write a wrapper for it similar to how the Talons have been added.
According to the folks in the announcement thread, REV will release the specs/programming specifics in the coming weeks along with more hardware.
For CTRE Phoenix, RobotPy just used thin wrappers around the C/++ API. My guess is that this will happen for the Spark Max.
From what I’ve heard, REV have also asked the WPILib folks with help on writing the roboRIO libraries for the SPARK MAX, so it’s likely Dustin will have enough influence such that writing a wrapper for their libraries shouldn’t be too difficult.
Fingers crossed.
The Spark MAX will definitely be supported for PWM – that’s super simple. I haven’t seen their API for anything advanced yet, but if it’s not terrible and weird it will probably be supportable.
Thank you all for your responses. That is what I thought. I love the fact that you all are continuing to develop python for FRC. My students do too. We have a great group of programmera who have been lead,ing python and are going to take a lead role programming this year because of it.
~R^2