KOP Contest (Cash Prizes for FRC teams)

[LightWaves1636]

This is located at this site here. (http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-15676)
Hey FIRST teams!

Do you and your team have a brilliant idea for crazy-fun-things you can build with your kit-of-parts now that the championships are over? If so, fill out the submission document and upload photos+videos of your amazing engineering accomplishment - all built with LabVIEW and the FIRST kit-of-parts.

Whether you are involved in FTC or FRC, we want to see how you are using the FIRST kit-of-parts and LabVIEW to Engineer Anything.

So, here's your checklist:
Step 1: Build something amazing with LabVIEW and your kit-of-parts
Step 2: Take photos and videos of your engineering accomplishments
Step 3: Fill out this submission document, and upload your code + videos + photos
Step 4: Hit Publish before December 1, 2011, and your team is eligable to win!

*Note: Please make sure to include mentor contact information on submission template (over 18 years-old)*

Mentors from the winning submissions will be contacted in January 2012. Winners will also be highlighted on ni.com/FIRST.

Ready to submit your project >> click here (http://decibel.ni.com/content/quicktemplates/doc-create!input.jspa?container=2013&containerType=14&documentID=tempDOC-63530&tagSet=&tags=&subject=New%20Submission%20Template%20for%20Kit%20 of%20Parts%20Challenge%202011) to visit the official “What can you build with your Kit-Of-Parts (KOP)” submission page.

FRC 3320, Miracles & Machines:
The team got started on two robot projects right when we got back from the Lone Star Regional. In three weeks, the team built a Soda Dispensing Robot and a T-Shirt Cannon Robot, both will be on display at FIRST World Championships at the National Instruments Booth. Unfortunately the physical team won't be there but please stop by the booth to check it out.

The Soda Dispensing Robot - Self-Explanatory, it's a line following robot that brings soda to a cubicle near you...

T-Shirt Cannon Robot - Again, self-explanatory, ours can launch the first t-shirt as far as 60 yards, then shoots a second and third t-shirt of exponentially shorter length. (That way it's not all three t-shirts bombarding one person)

Pictures and video documentation to come. :)

[Ninja_Bait]

Are we limited to the KOP or can we do anything, as long as we use the KOP?

[LightWaves1636]

Are we limited to the KOP or can we do anything, as long as we use the KOP?

Use any building materials you want essentially. They're mainly wanting you to use the FRC Control System and use LabVIEW as the programming language. So it can really range to anything from an Iphone driven car, a card sorting robot, m&M sorting robot, tweeting popcorn, or anything you and your team can think of....as long as you use the FRC Control System and LabVIEW.

[msulaimain]

I wish they had this type of contest using Windriver Workbench, because I HATE Labview.

[Taylor]

I wish they had this type of contest using Windriver Workbench, because I HATE Labview.

Since this contest is sponsored by National Instruments, I doubt this will happen.

Look at this as an opportunity to acquaint yourself with LabVIEW, learn its tricks and subtleties, and gain an appreciation for it.

[MishraArtificer]

Looks like a good opportunity for that security robot I mentioned in the "What to do about theft" thread...a pity I can't program worth ****.

[Chris is me]

Wow, we were already going to do exactly this! Now we might get money!

[qnetjoe]

I wish they had this type of contest using Windriver Workbench, because I HATE Labview.

Why do you hate LabVIEW? You might want to spend some time and learn LabVIEW. You would be suprised on what it can do.

Beside you don't want to be like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BppvSzsrNk

[Kevin Sevcik]

I suspect some people might be interested in languages that are a little more generally applicable and not so tightly bound to a specific vendor's hardware. And from a pedagogical standpoint, Labview hides a lot of details that are important for a budding computer scientist to learn. It's certainly useful for many things, but it's not a great stepping stone to any other programming languages.

Also, could we please, please not do the iPhone car thing? As I've ranted elsewhere, it's very, very difficult to do that safely with the FRC Control System. You need to think long and hard about fail safe mechanisms and how your actuators will react to a loss of communications or power. Personally, I'd really hate to read about an FRC team losing someone due to a run away cRIO controlled car.

Basically, whatever you're planning, ask yourself if your FRC bot has ever done something completely unexpected that you don't understand, and then ask yourself how bad it'd be if your offseason project did that.

[Alan Anderson]

I suspect some people might be interested in languages that are a little more generally applicable and not so tightly bound to a specific vendor's hardware.

I don't know what you're trying to imply, Kevin. LabVIEW is a very capable general-purpose language that runs on a wide variety of hardware. I'm using it right now on a system built around an Intel CPU and sold by Dell Computer. Around the corner from me it's running on a generic AMD-based box running Windows XP, and I've seen it used on Apple Macintoshes and on HP systems with Linux. And we all know it runs on the CompactRIO.

And from a pedagogical standpoint, Labview hides a lot of details that are important for a budding computer scientist to learn. It's certainly useful for many things, but it's not a great stepping stone to any other programming languages.

If FRC were a computer science competition, I'd be agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But it isn't a computer science competition, any more than it's a materials science or RF design or metallurgical competition. We're mostly giving students exposure to and experience with good use of appropriate tools and materials. We're not really expecting them to learn the details of tool design, are we?

It's arguably true that LabVIEW is not a particularly effective language for teaching low-level CS concepts, but LabVIEW programmers are certainly able to take advantage of those concepts, and it's a fantastic language for use by domain experts who don't happen to be expert programmers.

[santosh]

If FRC were a computer science competition, I'd be agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But it isn't a computer science competition, any more than it's a materials science or RF design or metallurgical competition. We're mostly giving students exposure to and experience with good use of appropriate tools and materials. We're not really expecting them to learn the details of tool design, are we?

True, but in many instances, these kids are learning above and beyond what they are expected to learn. Why inhibit that?

[Kevin Sevcik]

It's arguably true that LabVIEW is not a particularly effective language for teaching low-level CS concepts, but LabVIEW programmers are certainly able to take advantage of those concepts, and it's a fantastic language for use by domain experts who don't happen to be expert programmers.I'll agree that labview vastly simplifies things for domain experts with little programming experience, but you don't have to do anything particularly complex for the over simplification to bite you. I had a colleague doing basic motor control and datalogging on a labview RT+FPGA system. He appended the data to be logged to an array every control loop. And didn't have a clue why he started missing loops after a few seconds of runtime. Labview was, of course, dynamically resizing the array after an append pushed it outside its reserved memory. That array copy eventually bogged down the control loop, causing missed loops. The mere fact that a beginner doesn't need to think about where all this data is going is a pitifall waiting to trip you up later in your labview programming adventures.

As for hardware compatibility, yes, labview runs on lots of platforms, as long as you're primarily interested in working with NI hardware to interface with the rest of the world. Once you step outside the NI garden, doing things with labview can quickly become complicated.

And that's as far OT as I'll drag this thread. If we want to further discuss the merits and deficiencies of Labview as a general and FRC language, we should start up a new thread.

[Greg McKaskle]

Just a few comments.

I wasn't involved in writing the rules for the contest, but I don't believe they say you have to write all the code in LabVIEW. Perhaps it would be more impressive to the judges to write some code in LV and some in C/C++ and integrate them to do things that are difficult using just one alone. But, a bit of advice -- using the word sucks in relation to a product from company X on the entry form for a contest about products from company X will probably not get you bonus points. You may be good enough to pull it off, but probably not.

Car thing: I wholeheartedly agree. Please do not treat this as a license to build stuff even as dangerous as FRC robots. No parachute deployment systems for skydiving. No robots throwing knives at blind-folded assistants. Use your brain. Use your common sense. Be careful.

LV comments: All languages, all of them, abstract and hide details, otherwise what are they worth. If it hides what you want, awesome. If it hides something you don't, not so awesome.

Tightly bound: LV is able to call DLLs or the equivalent on every platform. It incorporates .NET, ActiveX, even AppleEvents. It can call command scripts, communicate using TCP, UDP, serial, quite a bit of USB and other protocols. LV has better support for NI HW than that of other companies, but not surprising since, much of the HW support for NI products is done by the NI HW teams, and that is what most customers request. Where there are good open standards they are generally adopted and further open the platform. I'd be happy to discuss what you feel should be more open, but as suggested, on the other thread.

Greg McKaskle

[LightWaves1636]

Remember everyone, you visit the NI Booth at FIRST World Championships and check out the FRC 3320 off-season robots and receive more information on the contest. :)

[eastside]

hey everyone plz. check out our robots, we worked really hard on them.

[qnetjoe]

Just a few comments.

I wasn't involved in writing the rules for the contest, but I don't believe they say you have to write all the code in LabVIEW. Perhaps it would be more impressive to the judges to write some code in LV and some in C/C++ and integrate them to do things that are difficult using just one alone. But, a bit of advice -- using the word sucks in relation to a product from company X on the entry form for a contest about products from company X will probably not get you bonus points. You may be good enough to pull it off, but probably not.

Car thing: I wholeheartedly agree. Please do not treat this as a license to build stuff even as dangerous as FRC robots. No parachute deployment systems for skydiving. No robots throwing knives at blind-folded assistants. Use your brain. Use your common sense. Be careful.

LV comments: All languages, all of them, abstract and hide details, otherwise what are they worth. If it hides what you want, awesome. If it hides something you don't, not so awesome.

Tightly bound: LV is able to call DLLs or the equivalent on every platform. It incorporates .NET, ActiveX, even AppleEvents. It can call command scripts, communicate using TCP, UDP, serial, quite a bit of USB and other protocols. LV has better support for NI HW than that of other companies, but not surprising since, much of the HW support for NI products is done by the NI HW teams, and that is what most customers request. Where there are good open standards they are generally adopted and further open the platform. I'd be happy to discuss what you feel should be more open, but as suggested, on the other thread.

Greg McKaskle

You took the words out of my mouth. I hope that everyone sees this as an opportunity to push the limits of their understanding and learn new things.

After all FIRST is about education and not software training!