Deploy process details

When the code is uploaded to the robot, the following steps occur:

  • SSH/sftp operations are performed as the lvuser user (this is REALLY important, don’t use the admin user!)

  • pyfrc does some checks to make sure the environment is setup properly

  • The directory containing robot.py is recursively copied to the the directory /home/lvuser/py

  • The files robotCommand and robotDebugCommand are created

  • /usr/local/frc/bin/frcKillRobot.sh -t -r is called, which causes any existing robot code to be killed, and the new code is launched

If you wish for the code to be started up when the roboRIO boots up, you need to make sure that “Disable RT Startup App” is not checked in the roboRIO’s web configuration.

These steps are compatible with what C++/Java does when deployed by eclipse, so you should be able to seamlessly switch between python and other FRC languages!

How to manually run code

Note

Generally, you shouldn’t need to use this process.

If you don’t have (or don’t want) to install pyfrc, running code manually is pretty simple too.

  1. Make sure you have RobotPy installed on the robot

  2. Use scp or sftp (Filezilla is a great GUI product to use for this) to copy your robot code to the roboRIO

  3. ssh into the roboRIO, and run your robot code manually

python3 robot.py run

Your driver station should be able to connect to your code, and it will be able to operate your robot!

Note

This is good for running experimental code, but it won’t start the code when the robot starts up. Use pyfrc to do that.