Stands for "Lunar Autonomous Mining Entity". But really, it's just an excuse to call our software LAME 😊.
The higher level control software for BLER is split into 2 parts: the BaseStation and Robot code. The base station code (GUI) is written in C# with its own implementation of the packet structure. The robot, its own as well. It's easier to write it twice than attempt a shim layer, especially if it's for a small thing like buffer packing.
The robot and base station communicate via packets. The structure is given below.
| Byte Index | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 ... n - 1 | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Header | Opcode | Payload size | Payload | End bytes (0x7F) |
Services are independent pieces of code that, at runtime, can be selected to run, either at regular intervals or when a packet is received. In order to mediate which services are running, each service is registered to a ServiceMaster. A client can send control packets activate/deactivating services.
The base station code is a C# WPF application. It is responsible for moderating the status of the robot and switching drive modes if necessary.
The robot code is a native C++ application. It supports (or will support!) 3 drive modes (tethered/direct, remote, and AI). It is also responsible for sending back images of the field upon base station request, and more.
You must have JoystickLibrary (https://github.com/WisconsinRobotics/JoystickLibrary) cloned in the top level. The static C++ library must be copied into the Robot/ folder.
cd Robot/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .
You will need the C# version of the aforementioned JoystickLibrary, and copy the compiled dll into the BaseStation folder. Then open the solution and build within Visual Studio.