Gyro accuracy

[amberneb]

Our team has a question about the gyro sensor. This is our first year using Pybricks block coding. In the past with the Lego platform, we used to create MyBlocks with math to make the gyro drive straight and turn. In pybricks, is it really just as simple as using the "use gyro" block? Or would we get better accuracy by still using some type of math block? We are also concerned about our coding being too simple for FLL judging if we aren't using any math blocks.

[laurensvalk]

I'm glad to hear it is working well! This is a good problem to have 😄

We are also concerned about our coding being too simple

I would personally not make things any more complex than they need to be, especially not for show. You might have heard about the The Zen of Python, which is advice for real Python. I've added the arrows here for the ones that seem especially relevant here:

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex. <---  🤖🤖🤖
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.   <--- 🤖🤖🤖
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.  <--- 🤖🤖🤖
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.  <--- 🤖🤖🤖
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

It would seem nicer to challenge yourself to go to the next level. How can you design your robot to complete all missions reliably? Is it possible to do multiple missions in one go? Are there ways for the robot to verify that it has completed missions correctly? Is there a way to do this with sensors? Can you make your robot safely abort a mission if it gets stuck to save time?

[rajeshsubramanianus]

We are also in the same boat.

In Spike, we used to create separate MyBlocks for each of the movement - go straight, turn, reverse etc. which include "Yaw" reference for Gyro implementation. Then we used those MyBlocks in our mission code (linear vs modular code). We got robot design award in our qualifiers due to this coding strategy mainly.

After qualifiers round, we moved to PyBricks seeing all our MyBlocks are already in-built. The coding is so easy and our team is feeling much more comfortable with coding! Since the block version of Pybricks shows equivalent Python code it provided an opportunity for our team to learn Python programming. This PyBricks is a great medium for kids to move from Block code to actual programming. Since coding took less time, we are concentrating on other aspects of Robot design and game as @laurensvalk mentioned.

We liked PyBricks so much we are having a page in our presentation for State competitions (please see attached image). We are also planning to have a stall in our pit to explain the features of PyBricks. Any ideas are welcome!

[laurensvalk]

Thank you for sharing your experience. Love the poster!

[dlech]

I love it! I don't know exactly why, but it really makes me happy to see all of the hard work we've put into Pybricks summarized in a simple table. 😆

One bit of constructive feedback: I'm a bit unclear on what line 6 means and how it is different from line 2. Other than that, I think it is 💯 brilliant!

[rajeshsubramanianus]

Thanks @laurensvalk and @dlech for making our (coaches) lives easy!

[rajeshsubramanianus]

One bit of constructive feedback: I'm a bit unclear on what line 6 means and how it is different from line 2. Other than that, I think it is 💯 brilliant!

Thanks for the feedback. Nice catch! Both are related, you are right. No.2 talks about definition, No.6 talks about usage of that. We should have put them together :)