Re: How early in the season did you get to test your programming?
 

Today we really got most of the robot... and we still have a few buggers to work out. Luckily we've got a cupboard, a power outlet, and a nice long bus ride to St. Louis... a programmers dream, right? This year was the first year we really had any sensors on our robot!!!:D :ahh:

Re: How early in the season did you get to test your programming?
 

This year's programming time was better than last year.

Early in the build season, about week two or three, we had a completely functional prototype, except it was missing half the sensors.

Today, the mechanics and electronics told me I would have an entire day! But they were still sorting out wires and fastening on pieces in between the time where I got to test. I wrote code for ten minutes, downloaded it, waited half an hour before testing it and finding any errors so that a bolt could be screwed in on the arm, and rinsed, washed, and repeated the process.

Last year, 90% of the programming was done in the fixit window.

Re: How early in the season did you get to test your programming?
 

Traditionally, we have solemly respect the time-honored FIRST tradition of giving our programmers all the time they need to get the robot working (read, night before ship day).

For the first time ever, this year we broke with our sacred traditions, and were able to give our programmers a working drivetrain by late week 3. They took advantage of the time and were able to get some pretty awesome autonomous light following stuff done.

After the arm, we were actually given them most of the last 4-5 days to get the arm working. Well, "working" being when the banebot transmissions weren't being evil. It all came together this afternoon though. We are inches away from having a working autonomous code that scores the Keeper.

Personally, I think this is a real turning point in our teams history, we've never managed to actually stick to a schedule before, and the things we were able to accomplish this year were fantastic.

Good luck to all you programmers with the long night ahead of you! See you in competition!

-Chris

Re: How early in the season did you get to test your programming?
 

:D Our programming team (myself and the two students) have joked several times that we should just not even show up until week 5.

This was a good year. We tested every single component and it's code separately by week 4. Weeks 5 and 6 we debugged (mechanically and programming), and went to a scrimmage. Now we're fixing the damage, adjusting, and got to spend an entire day doing nothing but tweaking our autonomous.