v5_cli

About

After getting frustrated with pros-cli freezing my terminal (to submit a bug report) every time an error occurred, I decided to create my own implementation. I chose to (re)write it in Rust mainly to gain experience with the language, but also because I was already familiar with one of its CLI frameworks, clap.

Once I had made an app with about the same features as the original, I left the project alone until I discovered that direct bluetooth connection to the VEX V5 brain was possible. This led me to try and enable wireless code upload over bluetooth LE. Using bluetooth was more difficult than I originally anticipated as bluetooth APIs tend to be asynchronous and bluetooth connections are significantly less reliable than wired ones. This required me to rearchitect the project to use asynchronous Rust, and account for packet loss and/or corruption in-transit.

Features

• Connect to V5 robot via usb or wirelessly via bluetooth
  • Significantly better throughput compared to VEXnet controller connections.
• Upload binaries
  • Supports PROS style hot/cold linking
• Manage robot filesystem
  • Installed programs, metadata
• Update robot name, team number
• Connect to running program’s standard input/output for debugging
• List connected V5 devices
• Keep robot connection alive with a daemon
  • Automatically reconnects if connection is lost
  • Allows for interaction with standard i/o and the system i/o simultaneously