C#, being the Microsoft child that it is, is only on cellphones that have WinCE on it. The other cellphones have their own OS which the mobility of JAVA can conform too.

a Basic X would be great. read THIS.
One possibility i have been thinking about is having a socket where a BasicX24, BS2/BS2SX/BS2P24, OOPIC-C, Atom-24, etc.... could be inserted. These chips are pin for pin compatible and completely interchangable. What about a "real"(assembly programmed) microcontroller and a high level language compiler.
As for a language being too complicated for rookies... I think its complete BS. I RT%M and got aquanted with the control system in about an hour or so. Its not hard. If you know one language its not hard to learn another. I would love a change.

pin for pin compatible doesn't buy much...
 

Pin for Pin compatible doesn't really buy much for you in this environment.

Innovation First has to design a system to work with these different chips. I doubt that they are so compatible that they could each be plugged in and made to work with the same Master CPU code.

As to BasicX -- I have tried it and it is pretty cool. I especially like the multitasking ability. The main drawback as far as I can see is that the 1000 bytes of ram seem like a lot until you actually have a few tasks running. It especially stinks that the BasicX version of the Pbasic Debug command pops stuff onto the task stack. This can be a disaster because a complex debug statement can easily overrun the stack and crash the code.

It would be cool, but it is a bit scary to think about folks having random code crashes due to stack overflows.

Joe J.

Re: pin for pin compatible doesn't buy much...
 

Why wouldn't it work. Please explian.

Tasks and Stacks...
 

Every task has to have a place to store data. As you define new tasks, you also define a stack space.

So far, so good.

But, BasicX is a language for consenting adults, by which I mean that it depends on you to be a adult and to alot enough stack space so that the stack does not overflow.

If you DO overflow the stack, you overwrite the data from another task -- and as likely as not the data overwritten will be a non-trivial byte of data, the program counter for that task for example. This is sort of a disaster. All the more so because I had a problem with Task A and Task B crashed! Very tricky to debug.

The problem is made worse by the fact that the print.debug command pushes data onto the stack, and lots of it. You can have program that is working just fine and the it crashes simply because the number you are trying to display cannot be displayed as "5.30" but has to switch to "5.3333E00"

These kinds of bugs would be very hard for many teams to discover, yet alone repair.

Joe J.

Re: Tasks and Stacks...
 

EEEWWW!! Thats sounds like it could be quite a pain to debug. Maybie BasicX would be a little hard for some teams. That still leaves lots of other options though.

The New RC
 

I doubt it would be in C++ because they would probably give us a RC similar to last years. It would be in C if anything. Does anybody know what the RC is, what the specs are on it, and where docs and incs could be downloaded?

working with many different parallax and ifi items before, they mainly use versions of basic, it seems like next year pbasic will still be able to use but it seems the main language would be basicx, it is capable of have higher storage and also faster reaction times to input sensors, seems like autonomous will be present again.

~Mike

Re: The New RC
 

The old RC has been taken apart and examined by at least one of the engineers from team 111, Wildstang. I believe Dave Flowerday (I apologize if I am mistaken) has made a few posts on this topic, but I can't find them, right now.

The control system is vaguely (not too many really technical details) documented by IFI in the various documents on their website ( www.innovationfirst.com/firstrobotics/ ). So far as I can remember from various sources (if you ask, I can probably dig them up), the BS2sx is just a dumb interface to two PIC chips that handle signal processing, PWM, sensor inputs, etc.

At the FIRST Team Forums, they said that IFI was renovating the entire control system. The meaning of this is up to interpretation, and I doubt that every single FIRST rep said the exact same thing, but I tend to agree with you. I find it highly unlikely that we'd find anything other than C (it's very common in the uC world, it's well-known (most engineers could work their way around the syntax, probably, anyway), and it's nowhere near as convoluted as ASM can be (not that I don't like ASM, mind you).

Anyway, I've probably said too much, not to mention the fact that I've probably said it all before...

Re: Re: The New RC
 

Cool. By "renovating", do you mean that they are massively overhauling the RC unit, making minor changes to the current one, or replacing the RC completely?

from what i have heard they are updating the chip so it has more memory for storage and it looks like the controller may be updated a little but don't expect much...
~Mike

Re: Re: Re: The New RC
 

Heh. Well, that's the question. If I'm not mistaken, there were statements that there will be "a new language" for the control system, and that IFI would be releasing information concerning their changes within the next few weeks (they said late June was unlikely, and July was much more likely), but you know how these kinds of things are with deadlines. :p

I don't think that anyone, besides employees of IFI, knows much about the extent of the renovations.

I've heard from 2 different people that next year there will be more of a plug and play system, less programming more clicking. Obviously this is a rumor and i have no proof or anything, and won't bother claiming, "knowing someone at first" I personally would find this sad though, unless you could code on your own and choose not to use the other system.
-Eric

I see. I sure hope that that rumor is false - it would be a shame. It seems unlikely thought because the FIRST people claimed that they were trying to involve more programming. I guess all we can really do is wait for them to announce it though.

just from what was said at many of the forums, implied that they wanted more autonomous programming, meaning they would need a better language (BasicX) and a larger chip. The plug and play rumor i have heard also and i hope for the games sake that it is false, plug and play would cause the game to be toned down more or less...
~Mike