Intro to ftc programming
Tags: java, beginners, gradle, programming
Published: 2021-10-27 05:37:07

What is the FTC SDK 🤔, it is the interface between your code and the robot without it your code won't work. so first lets download [android studio](https://developer.android.com/studio). 

once you run the installer and setup android studio now we are going to download the [SDK](https://github.com/FIRST-Tech-Challenge/FtcRobotController) first go to the GitHub repo and there will be a green button with the text `code` ![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xywel5lzw98zv84n6j7z.png) when you click on it there will be a button with a clipboard icon when you click on it the url of the GitHub repo will be copied to your keyboard.

now switch back to android studio on the home screen there should be a "clone from VCS" button that will open a dialog and in the text box on the top is were you are going to need to put the url and the textbox underneath is for the download folder.

Now **before you click the "clone" button** check by the bottom textbox and if you see a line of text saying "Git is not installed" click on it and it will start downloading git. 

Now after that finishes click the "clone" button and you will get a popup asking if you want to sign in with GitHub or a token, for this tutorial we are going to the token method after you click sign in with token you should see a textbox and a button on the right side of the textbox saying "generate" if you click on that button you will see a page like this 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/1x1qsfo6bjfahmg2xdyj.png) 

This is were you grant this token permissions, now scroll down to the bottom of the page and there is a green button with the text "generate token" 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mr3ul2b0pokl4i8vec12.png) 

when you click that you will see a page with a string of letters with a clipboard icon on the right side, by clicking on it you will copy the token to your clipboard, next switch back to android studio and put that token you copied into the textbox and click on the "ok" button.

Now the project should be opening in android studio in the bottom right there should be a progress bar wait for that to finish before continuing, now once it's done loading on the top right of android studio there is a button with the icon of a cube with a blue arrow pointing downwards.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/z4wzk4gw0g34krpo6oc5.png) 

This button will open the Android SDK manager which will let us program with specific android versions when you open the manager you will get a dialog with a list of android versions but we are only interested in two `7.0 -> 7.1.1` 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dh07t3hhe3yef0ky5hyq.png) 

those two are from android nougat which is the current version supported by FIRST, then click on the "ok" button and accept the terms.

Now your PC ready for programming FTC robot's 🥳, now in the next part I will be going to go over the basics of using the FTC SDK.