Flywheel Example

Flywheels are a commonly used mechanism in FTC for launching game elements, and most often controlled with a velocity PID feedback controller.

With NextControl, that would be implemented like this (using hypothetical constants):

controlSystem {
    velPid(0.001, 0.0, 0.0)
}

What can I do with this?

If you're using a command-based framework, like NextFTC, you can create commands using your control system.

If not, we can create OpModes that use our controllers directly. For example, let's say we wanted to change the target velocity of our flywheel using a button press. We can easily do that by simply changing the goal of our ControlSystem:

class FlywheelExample() : OpMode() {
    val flywheelMotor by lazy { hardwareMap.get(DcMotorEx::class.java, "flywheel") }
    val controller = controlSystem {
        velPid(0.001, 0.0, 0.0)
    }

    override fun init() {
        controller.goal = KineticState(0.0)
    }

    override fun loop() {
        if (gamepad1.aWasPressed()) {
            controller.goal = KineticState(0.0, 2000.0)
        } else if (gamepad1.bWasPressed()) {
            controller.goal = KineticState(0.0, 0.0)
        } else if (gamepad1.xWasPressed()) {
            controller.goal = KineticState(0.0, 1000.0)
        }

        flywheelMotor.power = controller.calculate(KineticState(
             flywheelMotor.currentPosition.toDouble(),
             flywheelMotor.velocity
        ))
    }
}