Rover Protocol

Shared compact wire protocol for the RIT SPEX rover. Used as a git submodule by both:

• rovers-basestation — Raspberry Pi basestation
• rovers-ros — Rover ROS 2 workspace

What it provides

• protocol.yaml — Source of truth for all message definitions, signal types, controller mappings, timing, and communication settings
• rover_protocol.MessageEncoder — Bidirectional encoder/decoder that packs signals into compact byte messages
• rover_protocol.CONSTANTS — Namespace with all IDs, button mappings, and tuning values (built from protocol.yaml at import time)

Structure

rovers-protocol/
├── protocol.yaml         # All message + controller definitions
├── pyproject.toml
├── rover_protocol/       # Python package
│   ├── __init__.py       # Exports MessageEncoder, Signal, CONSTANTS, etc.
│   ├── codec.py          # MessageEncoder + Signal classes
│   ├── constants.py      # CONSTANTS namespace (loads from protocol.yaml)
│   └── schema.py         # YAML loader
└── tests/
    └── test_codec.py     # Encode/decode round-trip tests

Usage

Both consuming repos include this as a submodule at lib/rovers-protocol/ and add it to sys.path via wrapper modules. No pip install needed just gotta remember to clone with --recurse-submodules.

from rover_protocol import MessageEncoder, Signal, CONSTANTS

encoder = MessageEncoder()

# Encode controller data
data = {"AXIS_LY": 100, "AXIS_RY": 100, "A": False, "B": False}
encoded = encoder.encode_data(data, CONSTANTS.COMPACT_MESSAGES.XBOX_ID)

# Decode it back
decoded, message_id = encoder.decode_data(encoded)

Adding a new message

1. Add the message to protocol.yaml under messages:
2. Add the ID to CONSTANTS.COMPACT_MESSAGES in rover_protocol/constants.py
3. Run pytest tests/ to verify encoding/decoding

See the basestation developer guide for better step-by-step instructions that I am too lazy to add here.

Installation & Development

While mainly used as a submodule, you can install it in editable mode for better IDE support (autocomplete) or when sys.path hacks fail:

cd lib/rovers-protocol
pip install -e .

Running tests

pip install pytest pyyaml
python -m pytest tests/