Chief Delphi - Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

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Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by randalcr (Post 1281817)

First, sorry to revive an old and dead thread. I'm trying to find information about the IFI controllers and so far what I have found is fairly limited. What I really am trying to find out is whether there are any data-flow or non-text based programming methods for the old FRC control system, something simliar to labview is really what I want, as I hate text based coding. If there are no other methods that can be used I can suck it up and use the tools mentioned in the thread.

Thanks.

In either 2006 or 2007 they expanded the memory on the IFI robot controllers in part to support the use of EasyC.

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by randalcr (Post 1281817)

Note: I was not in FRC when these controllers were in use. The extent of my usage of them is from a small project about a year or so ago.

The 2004-2008 IFI Controllers could be programed with the Microchip MPLAB C18 compiler and with intelitek easyC PRO (for at least 2007-2008, not sure if this is an option for earlier controllers). This document describes the software available in 2007. While the IFI links seem to be dead now, many of those documents can be found on Team 358's control system archive: http://www.team358.org/files/programming/

easyC offered a GUI programming environment, although unlike LabVIEW I believe it generated C code. I've never used it, so I'm not entirely sure. I did find some archived workshops on it, though, again from Team 358: http://team358.org/files/workshops/

Unfortunately, both the MPLAB C18 compiler and easyC Pro are non-free (the MPLAB IDE is free, but not the compiler). If your team is old enough to have the controllers, you might have the software cd's somewhere as well?

If you use MPLAB, make sure you check out Kevin Watson's FRC code respository: http://kevin.org/frc/

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by DomenicR (Post 1281840)

easyC offered a GUI programming environment, although unlike LabVIEW I believe it generated C code. I've never used it, so I'm not entirely sure.

I've seen the interface, but never used it. This is correct--and it showed the C code if you asked it.

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Thanks for all the info! My team has been around for 14 years now, so we should have some of the software laying around, however are there alternatives for programming them if the software cant be found? Also how was labview incorporated into the robots in 2008? I've been looking for that information and have found nothing and am just curious.

Thanks again!

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by randalcr (Post 1282998)

Also how was labview incorporated into the robots in 2008? I've been looking for that information and have found nothing and am just curious.

I don't think it was. The 2008 controller was programmable in C only, IIRC. The Labview equivalent, EasyC, would allow you to program visually (like Labview or LEGO coding languages) but would then load the C code to the controller.

Labview didn't become an option until 2009.

Unless you're thinking of a data acquisition system that was made available as early as 2006, but I don't think you're thinking of that.

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Im not sure how Labview was supposed to be used in 2008, but I have seen references of it in documentation from that year. Was it for data acquisition? Did it replace the dashboard viewer? I know it wasnt used to program the RC.

Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks for the answers!

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by randalcr (Post 1284462)

From the pre 2009 Programming Resources page at WPI:

Quote:

National Instruments has supplied a set of tools for LabVIEW equipped with a Data Aquisition Module to actually simulate robot hardware before it has been built. This gives programmers on a team to get a head start writing software by developing a model of the robot in software that LabVIEW uses to simulate motors, drive trains, chassis, and senors. By connecting the DAQ to the inputs and outputs on the robot controller, the software can run as if it were connected to actual hardware. You can then monitor the operation of the robot through various LabVIEW display panels.

Source: http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/frc-programming.html

Re: Inovation First FRC Robot Controller

Quote:

Originally Posted by randalcr (Post 1281817)

Teams' old IFI control systems are a good choice for a demo 'bot or T-shirt shooter, etc. The programming environment isn't that good, but it works. Here's http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/download/2176 a white paper on how to get started with it, in C. The IFI controllers ran out of gas when FIRST tried to add video processing in the tetra game "Triple Play" in 2005. It's also physically fragile compared to the cRIO.