RobotPy Installer

Note

This is not the RobotPy installation guide, see Getting Started 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.

As of 2015, the RobotPy installer now 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.

install-robotpy

python3 installer.py 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.

download-robotpy

python3 installer.py download-robotpy

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

download

python3 installer.py download 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.

python3 installer.py download -r requirements.txt

install

python3 installer.py 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.

python3 installer.py download -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.