custom button panel
 

hi!
my team is trying to build a custom button panel to control our robot, and we have some questions:
- i have read somewhere that the button panel is made of some kind of I/O microcontroller with buttons connected to it. is there a specific one we must use? because we have a microcontroller in our lab (i can't remember his name) which can be used as HID.
- how do we make our program to "read" this kind of input? (we use java)

thanks in advance!

Re: custom button panel
 

Assuming you don't use FRC rule breaking space magic, you'll most likely just be building a joystick with no axes. You can use the TI Launchpad you received in your 2015 KOP, instructions here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_Operator_Interface_for_FIRST_Robo tics_Competition. You can then read it from code just like any other joystick button. You don't have to use this one, any HID compliant joystick will work. This one just has FRC support.

Side note: You can read from autonomous, it just reads the last joystick value right before autonomous begins.

Re: custom button panel
 

no axes indeed XD

but we won't use this one, i think we don't have it anymore.
we have some kind of prototyping kit.
if the comuputer can read the signal from the device, the robot code will just "find" it?
or we need another software for it?

Re: custom button panel
 

UPDATE: the microcontroller we have is CY8CKIT-003 PSoC® 3 FirstTouch™ Starter Kit

http://www.cypress.com/documentation...ch-starter-kit

Re: custom button panel
 

This one is much harder to work with. The basics is the board that you connect your buttons to acts just like a joystick. You then load special software/firmware onto the board itself, but the computer you plug it into basically sees it as just another joystick. I have this specific board, but I don't know if it can act like a HID joystick. A relatively cheap option is the Teensy boards, which are easily programmed using Arduino and can show up as a joystick without much effort.

Re: custom button panel
 

you have to write a special software, or the comupter just sees the inputs?
and i am pretty sure it can act like an HID, we have it because it was used for a simmilar purpose.
and thanks for the help!

Re: custom button panel
 

The computer has no special software. All the custom software that makes it reads the buttons is on the micro processor. Again, I don't have any experience with PSoC boards at all, so I can't help with programming that.

Re: custom button panel
 

ok.
thank you very much for your guidance!

Re: custom button panel
 

If you have an arduino there is a software called unojoy that uses an arduino board and acts as a joystick.

Re: custom button panel
 

You may find the Custom Control Interface (CCI) from eStop Robotics LLC to be a good simple solution to your "custom button panel" project.

The CCI requires no additional software and integrates easily with the FRC supported programming environments.

You can find more information on the following page at eStop Robotics:
https://www.estoprobotics.com/estore...d&productId=33

Re: custom button panel
 

Interesting product, from a company I've not heard of yet. One concern, there doesn't seem to be many button inputs. If you do a autonomous switcher, that can be 5 inputs all by itself. Is there any way of increasing this? Also, do you have any way of doing the outputs in WPIlib like the MSP430 can?

Can't speak to this product, but eStop makes some pretty neat stuff. We used one of their battery hold-downs this season and loved it.

Re: custom button panel
 

thanks for the recommendation!
but i think that if we will buy a new controller it will be an arudino or an msp430 because they are cheaper (the msp430 is in first choice for 20 credits, arduino is about 25$) and they have more I/O us to use.


anyone here is familiar with this kind of project and i can contact to him if i need any further help?

thank you very much guys!

Re: custom button panel
 

I'll second the eStop CCI board, we've used it for the past 4 or so years on all our button boxes. It's incredibly easy, no need to do anything with the board besides plug it into a computer.

I would recommend the Dashboard be used for autonomous switching - it saves physical space on the custom button box as well as button inputs. Also if you decide to add an autonomous mode (or 24), it's easier to add an option virtually than physically.

Re: custom button panel
 

Yeah sure, you have a crap ton of autonomous modes. In the past, we've found issues with the dashboard not loading in time for us to select autonomous modes. I'll check this option out, but I really prefer a physical switch, which has less points of error (for us).