Geez, Adam and Lauren, I never realized there's so much confusion about who's the cat in team 159.
:)

I really like Adam's subroutines division selection because that offer flexibility in strat. However, I just don't to see the program get all sluggish and valuable RAM get hogged up by those subroutines.

Also, does anyone know if we can simulate the 15secs autonomous mode by fixing a adaptor for the IO competition port? Because from the IO documentation, it seems to me that two modes can be accessed through the competition port. Disabled and Autonomous. How would you set the channel or twig the setting to make it go autonomous like the way it would in the actual competition. Maybe it's not supposed to be used this way but I am just wondering.

set it to team 0000

would setting it to 0000 enable the autonomous mode or disable the robot? And, is it possible to program the OI so that it breaks out of autonomous mode after 15 secs and switch to RC mode? Thank you.

The best thing you can do is just assign a button to activate the auto code and just dont touch any controls

0000 makes it auto

Yep, thanks, just don't mess with the competition port at all.

Wow
 

Not seeing the robots at the kickoff work scared me. But what worries me more is that myself and the 3 others on our control team are all new to the club. What a year to join eh? But this year's game is still very cool.

I agree that switches will allow you to choose programs, but you could also use a pot. and get at least 12 posibilities for code. Just draw little marks where the knob needs to point for each code segment

that way you are not tieing up 3 or 4 binary ports, just one analog.

BTW if you look at the field drawing, the white lines are 2 feet apart at the ramp. If both robots are using the white line to get to the ramp AND both use sensors in the middle of thier bot to do it....well use your imagination if they get there at anywhere near the same time

autonomous mode, switching programs, etc.
 

A few comments for what's been said:

By modular, I mean that all of the subroutines are NOT on the robot, and pre-match we pick and choose the subroutines and create a normal, but taylored to the specific match; so, there's no concern about memory.

Testing autonomous mode/switching programs:
I was thinking to just do it timed (get rid of the code that deals with switching from autonomous mode in the default code, if that's allowed) - that way we can easily test it before the competitions, set up EXACTLY the way it will be when we get there. I've got to look into the legistics of this, but I think it will work. Anyway, to get out of autonomous mode, I hope to keep track of time, and after 15 seconds, use the RUN command to switch programs (we can definately fit 2 programs on there without worries). The benifit of that being this being that we can test at home, and we can use 2 different programs, and therefor not have to worry about variable space with the 2 combined.

I like "modular" because it allows for customizability, but, worse come to worse, we can use one program that we make before competitions (from the subroutines) - a default, if you will, in case we can't get a new program compiled.

Lauren - you smashed my programming authority, but what do you thing about modularity in the programming sense (btw, I think everything hardware should be modular too).

I'm with you adam. There is definately no auto period that will be perfect for every match, so there is a need to have a few, and hopefully one will be a good match for what your alliance partner can do with their auto period. And lauren can't stop us bwahahahahahahaha!

I haven't read the rules but it was implied at the kickoff that you could have multiple modes, but they had to fit in the program space all at the same time. I don't believe they want you "reprogramming" you robot between matches, but it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

Adam, you're all for a modular robot aren'tcha. :P (Hey, in this match, let's take off our welding torch and replace it with our helicopter blades! oh, and Adam, get that code ready).

It would take more debugging (the pain!), but the usefulness far outweighs the added stress of finding that one error in lines and lines of code

I think that the addition of the auto mode is a good thing. I just wish that we had some of those radar position transducers.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if its feasable to store your auto program in one slot, and then have it switch to a program in another slot at the end of the 15 second interval?

Yes. You can use something like

if auto_mode=1 then doAuto
RUN 1
doAuto:

-or-
using the new PBASIC syntax:
if auto_mode=0 then RUN 1

Andy:

I'm a controls engineer that programs almost entirely autonomous programs. If you have any questions on how to do something. Dropme an email and I'll post you through it. If you have played with LEGO Mindstorms, those programs are entirely autonomous.