Simulate flywheel for linear LinearMotion

Technical Python
#1

I’m attempting to simulate a PID controller for a shooter using the velocity of an encoder in ticks/sec. The relevant parts of the PID are here:

    def returnPIDInput(self):
        velocity = self.m_Motor1.getSelectedSensorVelocity(0)
        SmartDashboard.putNumber("Shooter Velocity", velocity)
        return velocity

   def usePIDOutput(self, output):
        SmartDashboard.putNumber("Shooter Output", output)
        return self.m_Motor1.set(output)

    def start(self):
        self.enable()
        self.setOutputRange(0, 1.0)
        self.setPercentTolerance(5)
        self.setSetpoint(100)

My PhysicsEngine is configured to update the quad_position and quad_velocity like this:

class PhysicsEngine(object):

    def __init__(self, physics_controller):

        self.physics_controller = physics_controller

        self.shooter = motion.LinearMotion('Shooter', 3, 917)
    def update_sim(self, hal_data, now, tm_diff):

        # Simulate the Shooter
        s_motor = hal_data'CAN'][robotmap.SHOOT_MOTOR_1]'value']
        s_position = self.shooter.compute(s_motor, tm_diff)
        
        hal_data'CAN'][robotmap.SHOOT_MOTOR_1]'quad_position'] = s_position
        hal_data'CAN'][robotmap.SHOOT_MOTOR_1]'quad_velocity'] = getRate(hal_data'CAN'][robotmap.SHOOT_MOTOR_1]'quad_position'],
                                                       self.s_last_pos,
                                                       tm_diff
                                                      )

The getRate() function just returns the ticks/10msec:

def getRate(motor, last_pos, tm_diff):
    rate = abs(motor - last_pos) / tm_diff / 100
    return int(rate)

The net result is indeed a motor that returns a rate of 27.5 when published to a dashboard (1440 clicks/foot / (.5ft wheel * pi)) / 100msec = 27.5 clicks/10msec).

My “problem” is that there’s no actual flywheel motion so the PID instantaneously achieves full speed and then when the PID switches back to 0, instantaneously achieves 0 rate. My thought is that I need to simulate some sort of inertia but this is proving to be difficult. I can do it with a relatively simple class that only allows a decay at a certain rate but this doesn’t work when the motor is not “on”.

Has anyone simulated a flywheel in the physics module or have thoughts on how to simulate inertia (or maybe just what I’m doing wrong…). Full disclosure: I’m not a math major nor developer by trade so feel free to point out the obvious mistakes in logic or math as well.

Thanks in advance.

#2

I’m not particularly good at math either… and as such, the LinearMotion helper doesn’t simulate inertia at all. In order to do that, I think you’d need to compute the actual velocity of the motor, then pass that in to compute() instead of the motor value.

#3

Long story short, I “solved” this problem by moving from using PIDSubsystem to using ClosedLoopControl on the TalonSRX. I also had to disable braking on the motor. Maybe everyone else knew that but, I didn’t…

#4