Need help with Festo Solenoid and Labview

[Team2883]

I have two questions how do we first hook up the Festo solenoid electronically. do we go through a relay, or through a PWM cable and how do we do it. Also how do we program it to fire off of one of our joystick buttons. If you could help that would be great. We will be working on several things tonight and this is one we want to try and solve before we can go any further.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Festo Solenoids should be connected to the Solenoid Breakout, as seen on page 34 of the Component Datasheets (http://usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/3-FRC%20Control%20System-Component-Datasheets-Rev-0-5a.pdf). First, make sure you have 12V power connected to the Solenoid Breakout. Then you can use one of the 2-wire jumpers provided in the kit to connect the Festo solenoid. The pins on the Solenoid Breakout are (more or less) single direction relays. So they only turn power on or off. For consistency, you should make sure the +Out pin connects to red wires, and the GND pin connects to black wires, but this isn't mandatory.

As far as programming in labview, the solenoid functions are in the WPI Library>Actuators palette. Per usual with the WPIlib, you first "open" a solenoid reference. Then you "Set" the solenoid state in your loop code. And finally, you "Close" the reference. The "Set" function takes a simple boolean input to set the solenoid on/off, so you can wire your button output straight to it.

[Bryan Herbst]

Adding on to what Kevin said-

The joysticks' buttons are accessed through the button cluster off the Joystick Get subvi. They are not in the same cluster as the axises. The upper output cluster is axises, the lower is buttons. Each button on the joystick is labeled, and is referenced by that number in the cluster. Unfortunately, they aren't labeled with names such as "trigger."

I know some teams (including mine) have had issues with finding the joystick buttons in labview.

[chris janney]

so how is it done in Java? i still dont know a lot about using Java but i have a small understanding.