Getting Started

Getting Hold of bV5

Right now there are no public repositories of binaries of bV5. If you found this site, either you found a random site, or it was linked to you. In the former case, welcome, stranger. In the, more likely, latter, there should have been a template archive provided to you in the same place. Take that archive, and un-archive it. And now you’re done. 🎉.

Introduction to bV5

bV5 is a fun little library I wrote for V5. Why? Because I wanted to have some fun, and I figured I might as well do something productive.

When you open your first project, you have a few files. The ones you’re going to be interested in initially are include/main.h and the ones in src/.

Here’s a sample from user.c:

#include "main.h"

void driver() {
    while (1) {
        /* [ SNIP  */

        /* Make sure to call delay so we can do other stuff */
        delay(20);
    }
}

If we have a look around, as well as driver, there are auton, setup, init, and disabled.

If you’ve been following along, you’ve probably noticed the all have a little comment saying what they do. Here’s what they do again, anyway:

• driver: This is the code that is run when you are in driver control mode.
• auton: And this is the code for when you’re in autonomous mode.
• disabled: This code is run when the robot is disabled.
• setup: This function is called before entering any of the previous three functions.
• init: This function is called once when the program starts. This is a good place to do things like startup background tasks, initialize sensors like ultrasonics, etc.

It’s important to note that any time you have a loop that will run for a long (or infinite) time, you will need to call delay() somewhere so that the rest of the system can tick along nicely.

main.h is a globally included header file. This is a nice place to define things you want to be global.

Where Next?

Anywhere, really. If you want to dive right in, the API reference is just for you, if you want to learn more about how to use the command line, that section’ll help, and if you’re looking to run some extra tasks or want to know a little about them, then have a look at Task Management.

This is the part where I’d usually refer you over to the examples, but they’re somewhat lacking because I’ve just spend 4 hours writing all these pages. I don’t really feel like making any examples. When I do, I’ll replace this.