Hello and welcome to the Electric Vehicle Team (EVT)! This project is designed to give you a look into what it is like to develop on the firmware team with. The goal is for you to get exposure to the full development life cycle at EVT, from prototyping with a breakout board to communicating between boards. This process is broken down into eight phases, each introducing a key part of our core library that the team uses all of our boards. Throughout the process you will learn everything you need to be a firmware engineer, from C++ fundamentals to class-level software design to hardware debugging.
If this is your first time doing embedded development, it will take some time to get used to all the new concepts and the quirks of working with hardware. Through this process, be sure to use all the resources at your disposal. Google is great for general C++ questions, and the firmware docs are useful for background on the tools we use for development, but when you're stuck, your best resource is going to be other firmware members, new and old. Collaboration is critical to our team's success, and it's often a lot more fun than grinding out code on your own!
Before getting started on the eight rampup phase, you need to first setup your build environment in order to actually compile code. Start out by heading to the Environment Setup page on the EVT website to install all the necessary tools for developing and compiling code. While you are waiting on all those tools to install, now is a perfect time to read up on Git and Github.
We primarily use Git and by extension Github ALOT. So it is important that you know a few basics. If you haven't used Git before, it might seem a bit overwhelming with all the different commands and terminology, but there is really only five key commands you need to know for 90% of your interactions with it. If any problems arise, Google is your friend when it comes to Git and is probably the best way to learn it. Your key commands are:
git clone [url]- This makes a local copy of a repository for you start modifying code.git pull- This updates your local repository with changes on the server.git checkout [-b] [<branch_name>]- This will switch your local code to a different branch. The-boption will also create a new local branch before switching to it.git submodule update --init --recursive- This downloads additional repositories that are referenced in a project.git commit- This allows you to submit your changes to the local repository's history.git push- This pushes your local history to the remote server for other to view and edit.
With your environment setup and a crash course in Git, lets try it out! Start
by cloning EVT-core to your local
project folder with git clone [email protected]:RIT-EVT/EVT-core.git (If you do
not have a project folder, we HIGHLY recommend you create one to store all of
the different EVT repositories in to which you will clone many). Once you have
EVT-core cloned, enter into the new directory and download all the submodules
with git submodule update --init --recursive in order to get all the
additional libraries we use. Finally follow the instruction in
Running Code
to build the repository. If all goes well, you now have a fully functional
build environment.
Now lets get you started on the rampup project! First, clone rampup to your
project directory (NOT the EVT-core directory!) with
git clone [email protected]:RIT-EVT/rampup.git. Again, update your submodules
with git submodule update --init --recursive to get the included copy of
EVT-core and libraries. We will now create a new local branch for your changes.
Any time we are developing a new feature or fixing a bug, we always create a
branch for that specific bug or feature off of the main branch. This branch follows the standard naming format of:
[bug/feature]/[GitHubUsername]/[name-of-bug-or-feature]. For example, to
complete rampup one might make the branch: feature/mjh9585/solved-rampup.
Create your own local branch now with:
git checkout -b feature/[GitHubUsername]/[branch-name]
With the repository cloned and your development branch created, it's time to get started on Phase 0.
Phase 0 is a short introduction C++ if you have never used it before. If you are comfortable with C++ object orientated programming, go a head an skip to Phase 1 and let the firmware lead know.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase0.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase1.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase2.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase3.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase4.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase5.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase6.
To get started, follow the instructions in targets/phase7.
Congratulations on completing the rampup project! If you're new to firmware development, starting something new like this can be very time-consuming and difficult, but you met that challenge and overcame it. I hope you got a good idea of how the firmware team operates and the type of work we do as a team. Having completed the rampup project, you are now a fully-fledged member of our team, so you can begin work on a project for one of our bikes. If there's anything else you want to learn about or don't understand, be sure to take some time now to read over some documentation and play around with it now. Once you think you're ready, you can reach out to the firmware lead to get your first project.
Good luck!