Lesson: The FTC SDK Library

The FTC SDK Library is a library of classes that allow your programs to access and control all aspects of the Tetrix robot control system and the hardware devices attached to it. This library is the API for the control system and robot hardware. The library is included in the FTC SDK. You can access the library with the following import statement in an OpMode class:

com.qualcomm.robotcore.<class/class-group>;

This provides access to the highest level of the library. All of the hardware and software classes are divided up into groups and each group will contain classes or lower level groups. You will need to import the classes you use in your OpModes. All OpModes need one of the following imports to make a base OpMode class available for your OpMode class to extend:

com.qualcomm.robotcore.eventloop.opmode.OpMode

or

com.qualcomm.robotcore.eventloop.opmode.LinearOpMode;

Another import you will always need is for the robot hardware classes:

com.qualcomm.robotcore.hardware.*;

Remember that the trailing * imports all classes contained in the named group (hardware in this example). You can import all of the hardware classes or just the specific classes you intent to use. Either way is valid.

The documentation for the FTC SDK Library is very important to read over to get a basic understanding of what classes are available for your use.

The documentation can be found online. You should bookmark this location.

If you are using Android Studio, the documentation is also located in the FTC SDK install directory (ftc_app-master-n.n) in the sub directory doc.javadoc. Click on the file index.html to display the documentation in your browser. The doc is in web format so you must use a browser to view it. You should create a bookmark to the index.html file. Don't forget to update this bookmark when installing new versions of the SDK.

There is a tutorial on the robot control system located online in the FTC SDK wiki.

Don't forget the example code that is included in the SDK in the FtcRobotController\java folder of the SDK project. All of these examples are also available in OnBot in a drop down list when you create a new Java file.