Really strange but with RTIMULib2, why does it not work in a class?

Question

I'm doing a project with an accelerometer/gyrometer combo and I'm using the great RTIMULib2 library. I know installing it and getting it to even work at all is a common challenge, but I've gotten it working, so that's not my problem.

If I do i2cdetect -y 1, the sensor shows up in address 68, as it should. When I run this sample script I made (even with no RTIMULib.ini file in the directory I'm running it in), everything works, and I get readings printed out to the screen! Interestingly, if there isn't an RTIMULib.ini file in the dir, it creates one. I did do the basic calibration a while ago, but those files are in the RTIMULib directory, which is in another parent dir, so I think it's just creating a default one.

So I know (a) my wiring is correct, (b) the library is installed correctly, and (c) everything can work.

Now, for my actual application, I want to have everything in a class, so it's neater. So I modified my test script above to just be in a class format, like this. As you can see, it's pretty much the same.

I create the object and try getting a reading like this, in another file:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
from Compass import Compass

compass = Compass()
print('Compass object created.')

reading = compass.getReading()
print('compass reading: ', reading)

However, when I run this, without changing anything else, instead of getting any reading, I get:

IMU init successful. poll interval: 4 Compass object created.

So it's init'ing the object, but the reading just hangs there for some reason...

I really have no idea what could be causing this. Does anyone have any ideas? I kinda suspect this might just be a python problem, like the object is getting reset or lost or something? Any tips would be really helpful, thanks!

Answer 1

I found the solution, in case anyone else makes the same dumb mistake I did. If you look at the init function of my class based version of it, I did:

def __init__(self):

        self.SETTINGS_FILE = "RTIMULib"
        s = RTIMU.Settings(self.SETTINGS_FILE)
        self.imu = RTIMU.RTIMU(s)

The problem is that apparently when s goes out of scope, it fails. I would think that if the RTIMU object is set with it, that wouldn't matter, but it does. Changing s to self.s fixes it!