Building Your Toolbox

Try It — How Many Copies Do You Have?

Open your projects from 12 onwards, one at a time, and count.

Now find out whether they match

Put the drive functions from two different projects side by side and compare them line for line.

Somewhere along the way you improved one of these — a better overshoot number, a cleaner stop. Which project has your best version, and do the others have it?

Your team has four people, each working on a different mission in a different project. One of them finds a much better turn. How does that reach everyone else?

Learn It — Your Own header file

A library is a collection of functions kept in a separate file that any program can include.

You have been using one since Project 2. It is the very first line of every program you have ever written:

#include <kipr/wombat.h>

That is the KIPR library. You cannot change it — but you can make your own beside it.

Two kinds of include

Get the brackets wrong and the compiler goes looking in the wrong place. It is a small detail that causes a confusing error.

What goes in your header file

Your header file holds everything. Your prototypes and your definitions, all in the one .h file.

myLibrary.h

#include <kipr/wombat.h>

void drive_forward(int ticks);
void turn_right();

void drive_forward(int ticks)
{
	cmpc(0);
	while (gmpc(0) < ticks)
	{
		motor(0, 50);
		motor(3, 50);
	}
	motor(0, 0);
	motor(3, 0);
	msleep(30);
	msleep(500);
}

void turn_right()
{
	// Your turn code
}

#include <kipr/wombat.h>
#include "myLibrary.h"

int main()
{
	drive_forward(4000);
	turn_right();
	drive_forward(2000);

	return 0;
}

Look at what main.c became. Two includes and a list of what the robot does. Nothing else.

Making a header file

• On the KIPR Software Suite home screen, click User Preferences and switch on the advanced interface. Without this you will not see the file options.
• In the KISS IDE, select your user folder.
• Under Include File, click + Add File.
• Name it — something short and yours, like your team name.
• Click Create.

Include files are .h files. You may also see an option for source files, which are .c — you do not need those for this.

When it will not compile

Do It — Move In

Step 1 — Turn on the advanced interface

Software Suite home screen → User Preferences → switch on the advanced interface.

• I can see the Include File option in the KISS IDE

Step 2 — Create your library file

Add an include file and name it. Then put the KIPR include at the top and save it immediately, before you write anything else.

Step 3 — Move one function — just one

Pick your drive function. Cut the prototype and the definition out of a project and paste both into your .h file. Save it.

Then add the include to main.c and compile.

• One function lives in my library and my program still runs

Step 4 — Break it four ways

Each of these is a mistake you will make for real one day. Make it now, on purpose, and write down what the compiler says.

Step 5 — Move the rest

Go through the function list you wrote in Project 12 and move each one across, compiling as you go. For each function, take the best version you have written — not just the first one you find.

• All my functions are in my library and my program still scores

Step 6 — Start fresh and pull it in

Make a brand new project. Do not write a single function in it.

#include <kipr/wombat.h>
#include "myLibrary.h"

int main()
{
	// Write a short run using only functions from your library

	return 0;
}

To use your library in a new project, add it under Include File and choose upload a file, then pick your .h.

• A brand new project runs a real sequence using only my library

Step 7 — Fix it once, watch it spread

Change something in your library — sharpen the turn, adjust the overshoot. Save. Then run two different projects that both include it.

What happened in the project you did not touch?

Step 8 — Write the instructions

A library nobody can use is not much good. Put a comment block at the top of your .h file listing what is in it.

// ============================================
// Team Bulldogs robot library
// Last updated: 12 March
//
// drive_forward(ticks)  - drives straight, given distance
// turn_right()          - zero radius 90 degrees right
// grab()                - arm down, close claw, arm up
// release()             - arm down, open claw, back away
// follow_line(ticks)    - follows the left edge for a distance
// ============================================

Then hand your library to another team and ask them to write a short program with it — without asking you any questions.

• Another team used my library without me explaining it

What did they get stuck on? That is the thing your comments should have said.

Step 9 — Back it up

Your library is now the most valuable file your team owns. Download it from the File Menu and keep a copy somewhere off the robot.

• My library is saved somewhere other than the Wombat

Score It — Checkpoint

No mission points this time. What you built is the thing that makes every future run faster to write.

My library

Which file?

Say whether each line belongs in your .h file, in main.c, or in both.

Can you do it again?

• I can explain what a library is and why one is worth building
• I can create a new include file in the KISS IDE
• I know when to use angle brackets and when to use quotation marks
• I know my library needs its own KIPR include
• I save the .h file before every compile
• I can pull my library into a brand new project
• My library has comments that let someone else use it

Think about it

The KIPR library was written by people you will never meet, and you have used it in every program since Project 2 without ever seeing inside it. Is that a problem?

Next season the game changes and the field is completely different. Which parts of your library would still be useful, and which would you throw away?

Look at what you have built across sixteen projects. Which one thing made the biggest difference to how your code works — variables, functions, sensors, or the library?

Next

One project left. Several missions still have a bonus that means nothing more than “now do that again” — and you are going to stop doing it by hand.

In Project 17 — Repeating Without Retyping, you meet the last loop.

KIPR · Botball Explorer — Discovery Projects · © KISS Institute for Practical Robotics 1997–2026