Robot Installation

These instructions will help you get RobotPy installed on your RoboRIO, which will allow you to write robot code using Python. If you install RobotPy on your RoboRIO, you are still able to deploy C++ and Java programs without any conflicts.

Note

If you’re looking for instructions to use NetworkTables from Python, you probably want the pynetworktables installation documentation.

Install requirements

Warning

This guide assumes that your RoboRIO has the current legal RoboRIO image installed. If you haven’t done this yet, see the WPILib documentation for imaging instructions. To image the RoboRIO for RobotPy, you only need to have the latest FRC Game Tools installed.

RobotPy is truly cross platform, and can be installed from Windows, most Linux distributions, and from Mac macOS also. To install/use the installer, you must have Python 3.6+ installed. You should install the installer via pip (requires internet access) by installing the core RobotPy components (see the computer installation section for more details).

Windows

py -3 -m pip install robotpy

Linux/macOS

pip3 install robotpy

Install process

The RoboRIO robot controller is typically not connected to a network that has internet access, so there are two stages to installing RobotPy.

• First, you need to connect your computer to the internet and use the installer to download the packages to your computer.

• Second, disconnect from the internet and connect to the network that the RoboRIO is on

The details for each stage will be discussed below. You can run the installer via python. This is slightly different on Windows/macOS/Linux.

Install Python on a roboRIO

Note

This step only needs to be done once.

As of 2021, installing Python and the RobotPy packages are separated into two different steps. Once you are connected to the internet, you can run this to download Python for roboRIO onto your computer.

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer download-python

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer download-python

Once everything has downloaded, you can switch to your Robot’s network, and use the following commands to install.

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer install-python

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer install-python

It will ask you a few questions, and copy the right files over to your robot and set things up for you.

Installing RobotPy on a roboRIO

The RobotPy installer supports downloading wheels from PyPI and the RobotPy website and installing them on the roboRIO. The download and install commands behave similar to the pip command, including allowing use of a ‘requirements.txt’ file if desired.

As mentioned above, installation needs to be done in two steps (download then install). Once you are connected to the internet:

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer download robotpy

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer download robotpy

See also

This command only downloads the core RobotPy packages. See additional details for installing optional/vendor components

Once everything has downloaded, you can switch to your Robot’s network, and use the following commands to install.

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer install robotpy

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer install robotpy

The robotpy installer uses pip to download and install packages, so you can replace robotpy above with the name of a pure python package as published on PyPI.

Note

If you need Python packages that require compilation, the RobotPy project distributes some commonly used packages. See the roborio-wheels project for more details.

Upgrading RobotPy on a roboRIO

The download and install commands support some pip options, so to upgrade you can use the -U flag on the commands mentioned above to download the latest versions of RobotPy.

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer download -U robotpy

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer download -U robotpy

The robotpy installer can tell you what packages you have installed on a roboRIO:

Windows

py -3 -m robotpy_installer list

Linux/macOS

robotpy-installer list