Need to learn PBASIC...Where Should I Go?
 

My team wants me to program next year. I know some BASIC, but I'd like to become more familiar with PBASIC so I'd actually know what I'm doing if I get assigned there. Are there any websites or books (preferrably websites) that would be helpful for a PBASIC novice?

Looking around through the programming whitepapers and forum, here on CD, should be of help.

Innovation First's website has the default code for the competition.

Parallax has technical information about PBASIC (not necessarilly the best resource for robotics related material, but definetly good reference material).

Well, once you get into it... we have an autonomous example on our site with a walk-through (www.combbat.com) and I'm going to be adding beginner programming tutorials over the summer, so watch out for that. You might also want to look around for any lectures that may be going on at remote kickoffs in January, that might help you out too. Personally, I learned a lot from the Parallax user guide, it is a great thing for troubleshooting (but is huge) if I find anything better to help you learn, I will post... but you might also want to check the white papers.

Wow...that was fast. Thanks for the advice.

If anyone else has any suggestions, I'll take those into account too.

In toronto, there's a VBasic programming course at a privite school in downtown... It is held at Branksome Halls* (The private all girls school)

*SP?

Read the Manual (V2.0)
 

I can tell you that one of the best sources of information I have had is the V2.0 manual.

The intro is very useful -- much improved from prior versions (V1.9 for example).

Also, know that everything to do with direct input and output via Stamp2 pins is more or less useless. You cannot use Pulsin or Freqout for example.

The basic structure of how you make a pin an input or an output is VERY useful (especially if you understand what the commands are doing to the variables INS, OUTS, and DIRS), but all but a handful of the commands that read from or write to pins are out of bounds because you don't have direct access to the pins of the Stamp2 from the RC controller.

Anyway, I recommend reading the book, especially the parts on how expressions are evaluated, how lines are parsed, and how math is performed internally.

Good luck.

Joe J.