RoboRIO Package Installer¶

Note

This is not the RobotPy installation guide, see Robot Installation if you’re looking for that!

Most FRC robots are not placed on networks that have access to the internet, particularly at competition arenas. The RobotPy installer is designed for this type of ‘two-phase’ operation – with individual steps for downloading and installing packages separately.

The RobotPy installer supports downloading external packages from the python package repository (pypi) via pip, and installing those packages onto the robot. We cannot make any guarantees about the quality of external packages, so use them at your own risk.

Note

If your robot is on a network that has internet access, then you can manually install packages via opkg or pip. However, if you use the RobotPy installer to install packages, then you can easily reinstall them on your robot in the case you need to reimage it.

If you choose to install packages manually via pip, keep in mind that when powered off, your roboRIO does not keep track of the correct date, and as a result pip may fail with an SSL related error message. To set the date, you can either:

Set the date via the web interface
You can login to your roboRIO via SSH, and set the date via the date command:
```
date -s "2015-01-03 00:00:00"
```

Each of the commands supports various options, which you can read about by invoking the –help command.

Installing/Executing the installer¶

To install/use the installer, you must have Python 3 installed. You can install the installer via pip (recommended) or you can use installer.py directly (see below).

On Windows:

py -3 -m pip install robotpy-installer

On Linux/OSX:

pip3 install robotpy-installer

To upgrade the installed version of the installer, you need to add the -U flag to pip.

Executing the installer¶

Once you have the installer program installed, to execute the installer on Windows you can do:

py -3 -m robotpy_installer [command..]

On Linux/OSX:

robotpy-installer [command..]

Download and use installer.py¶

You can download the file directly, or use the version that comes with the RobotPy download files. Once you have obtained the installer.py file, to execute the file:

On Windows:

py -3 installer.py [command..]

On OSX/Linux:

python3 installer.py [command..]

RobotPy¶

These commands allow you to install/upgrade RobotPy without needing to download a new version from github.

install-robotpy¶

robotpy-installer install-robotpy

This will copy the appropriate RobotPy components to the robot, and install them. If the components are already installed on the robot, then they will be reinstalled. You must already have the RobotPy components downloaded (via download-robotpy), or this command will fail.

download-robotpy¶

robotpy-installer download-robotpy

This will update the cached RobotPy packages to the newest versions available.

Python Packages¶

If you want to use a python package hosted on Pypi in your robot code, these commands allow you to easily download and install those packages.

Note

Some binary packages such as NumPy need to be installed as opkg packages

download-pip¶

robotpy-installer download-pip PACKAGE [PACKAGE ..]

Specify python package(s) to download, similar to what you would pass the ‘pip install’ command. This command does not install files on the robot, and must be executed from a computer with internet access.

You can run this command multiple times, and files will not be removed from the download cache.

You can also use a requirements.txt file to specify which packages should be downloaded.

robotpy-installer download-pip -r requirements.txt

install-pip¶

robotpy-installer install PACKAGE [PACKAGE ..]

Copies python packages over to the roboRIO, and installs them. If the package already has been installed, it will be reinstalled.

You can also use a requirements.txt file to specify which packages should be downloaded.

robotpy-installer install-pip -r requirements.txt

Warning

The ‘install’ command will only install packages that have been downloaded using the ‘download’ command, or packages that are on the robot’s pypi cache.

Warning

If your robot does not have a python3 interpeter installed, this command will fail. Run the install-robotpy command first.

IPK (binary) packages¶

The RobotPy project maintains a number of custom binary packages that are useful for FRC teams. For a list of packages that you can install, see https://www.tortall.net/~robotpy/feeds/2017/. These commands can be used to install those and other precompiled Linux packages that NI makes available.

download-opkg¶

robotpy-installer download-opkg PACKAGE [PACKAGE ..]

Downloads an ipk file from the RobotPy and NI’s online opkg repositories, along with the dependencies for the package.

install-opkg¶

robotpy-installer install-opkg PACKAGE [PACKAGE ..]

Copies ipk files over to the roboRIO, and installs them and their dependencies. If the package already has been installed, it will do nothing.

Warning

The install-opkg command will only install packages that have been downloaded using the download-opkg command, or packages that are already in the robot’s opkg cache