autonomus rules....
 

Can the robot read from the OI during autonomus? That is, can i have switches on the OI to dictate what autonomus i want to use?

Re: autonomus rules....
 

When the autonomous flag is set you cannot see the OI control settings. They appear to be neutral for the pots and off for the switches.
Just read and save the OI settings whenever the autonomous flag is not set. After it's set use your saved OI values.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

So in the few moments between turning the robot on and autonomus when disable is set the bot can read those paramaters?

Re: autonomus rules....
 

Yes, the OI values come through fine while only the Disabled flag is set.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

Beautiful, thank you.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

If you want to switch between autonomous modes you should use the Digital Inputs on the RC. Just wire a switch to each Digital Input for each autonmous mode you need, between the signal and the ground.

Just the way I would do it.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

What works very nicely is to use a pot on the OI, saving it's vale into a variable to set you auto-mode. Lets you change the auto from the player station, and is so much more convenient.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

I guess I'm a fan of the only system that hasn't been mentioned yet: analog controls on the RC.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

And I'm a fan of just reprogramming it :eek:

Re: autonomus rules....
 

We use two 6-position rotary switches on OI. They are nicer than pots because they have definite positions, but they require a bit of soldering to attach the resistors. Digital inputs on the OI are so precious, I hate to waste 5 of them on Auto switches.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

Digital inputs are indeed precious. We have basically have what you described on the robot itself: 2 10-position rotary switches, each of which involve soldering the 10 resistors together in close quarters.

Last year, my team used a bank of dip switches that went to digital inputs, plus one three-position switch wired to an analog input, which we used to denote the starting position.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

Well, our robot was very simple this year (rookie year, we followed the KISS philosophy), so we had the digital inputs to spare, but for next year I'm suggesting the following.

On the OI, have a couple of fixed position analog or digital inputs used to select the autonomous mode and a "Lock Autonomous Mode Switch." After the robot is powered, have the robot placement team signal the OI team to "Lock" the autonomous selection. One note on this is the "Lock Switch" will probably need an LED and an "Arming Cover" The OI has 16 analog and 16 digital inputs, so this shouldn't be a problem. This would require 1 digital (lock switch) and 2+ analog (start position and drive pattern??) inputs.

If we go this way though we will test the heck out of it using a competition port dongle and have a startup checklist... which reminds me. There are 2 kinds of people: Those with checklists, and those that will soon have checklists.

Re: autonomus rules....
 

Our programmers got really tired of having to upload a new program into the robot in between matches, so they came up with this. I think we have around 99 autonomous modes now, which we can switch between right before the match, while the robot is on the field. It helped us out a lot during the finals at Chesapeake. What do you guys think?

Re: autonomus rules....
 

That's a really nice product!
I made something similar this year for our robot, but it's not as neat and compact as that one is. I used short lengths of wire between the connectors and the dip switch. We used it with fair success at Chesapeake as well, I think we had about 5 different auto modes, hopefully we'll get some more programmed before nats!

-Chris

Re: autonomus rules....
 

we also used a bank of dip switches and came up with at least ten autonomous modes for them. the all the modes and positions were labled in binary.