Chief Delphi - Autonomous Switch?

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Re: AUTON QUESTION?

Quote:

Originally Posted by JordanManowitz (Post 1630444)

At the beginning of the match it states that robots can hold up to 10 fuel and 1 gear. If your team mates don't want to use fuel in auton can a team then have 30 fuel?

Question does not belong in this thread.

Answer to your question: No.

Re: Autonomous Switch?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ToddF (Post 1630461)

One of our lessons learned, which we will be implementing next year, is eliminating any reliance on the smart dashboard. We'll be putting our auto mode selection on the robot. We have been burned too many times by a malfunctioning smart dashboard on our control station computer. It always seems to happen at the worst possible time.

Quote:

And THAT's the match where your driver station keeps dropping connection, and you have to use the field's driver station,...

Smart dashboard is nice in theory, but in practice, it has its limitations.

Hardware Switches on a USB Joystick simulator is 99% compatible, provides visual feedback, can be changed up to the start of Autonomus (Did you set the switches on the Robot?), etc.

Re: Autonomous Switch?

for many years we had switches on the robot that were supposed to control autonomous modes, but I don't recall them ever actually working. The past couple years, we've had different modes selectable on the dashboard, as well as a few control parameter, and it always works...when we actually remember to set them before a match. Being relatively new to the art of drive coaching, it's taken me a little while to get used to remembering to ask about them every match, but we seem to have the hang of it now.

I don't recall ever having an auton not work because of a driver station crash. Although we have had it not work for other reasons.

Anyways, it's a good test of your programming team's skilz....

Re: Autonomous Switch?

As you can see, teams develop their own culture and style when it comes to setting up autonomous. Some like SmartDashboard, others have been burned by it.

Our team has tried DIP switch panels in the past, but last year we added one of these to the top panel of the robot:

http://www.robotshop.com/ca/en/gravi...module-v1.html

This is a 12-position analog rotary encoder switch with built in LEDs. We connected this to one of the analog inputs on the RoboRio. Each position on the switch feeds it a different voltage level, so it just took some simple experimentation to decode each position.

The Drive Team then literally dials in which auto mode they want. The correct LED lights up on the dial, and/or they can count the clicks. They really liked this system. The downside being that only 12 modes are possible with one switch, but you could combine this with another one (run auto mode 6, distance setting 11), or combine with something else.

I think we'll do this again, and maybe dress it up a bit to play up the mechanical bits to go with the steampunk theme.

Re: Autonomous Switch?

You might want to look into using SendableChoosers on the SmartDashboard rather than a bunch of switches (physical or on the dash). That's what we used last year, and it worked well. You just select the auton you want to run from a list of them on the dashboard before the match.