For 2018 (Panthera in PowerUp), the Pigeon IMU is initialized at power-up. This is when the orientation of the robot is established. Since we're using the IMU to provide field-centric driving compensation, it means the robot must be powered-up on the field, pointed in the correct direction.
At BattleCry, in the 2nd match of the elimination round, the officials requested that robots be powered on in the queue to speed up the connection process when setting up on the field. This meant our robot was no longer pointed in the right direction when the match started and both auto and the controls did not work as expected and the results weren't pretty.
- Hardware power-up sequences that can affect game play should be done at the start of auto or the start of tele as needed.
- If the above can't be avoided for performance reasons (for example, if the init sequence takes too long during auto), we need a hot key to do a re-init at game time. Better to waste a few seconds and forego auto than to ruin the entire match.