What is Classmate
 

Quick intro as this is my first post. I am team lead for a rookie team and am really excited to do FRC (I did FTC my freshman year, I'm now a sophomore). Anyway I was trying to educate myself on FRC especially it's control system and programming since it seems a lot more complicated (read interesting) than RobotC plus I'm my teams programmer. So on the kit of parts I saw a USB drive that had a Classmate image and then I saw some forum posts about Classmate. Naturally I started to wonder what Classmate is. I did a search on the forum with the terms what is classmate but i couldn't find any threads on it (if I missed one please point me to it). So my question is what is classmate and what purpose does it serve?

Thanks in advance

Re: What is Classmate
 

It's a netbook computer.

It runs the Driver Station software which communicates with the robot.

Re: What is Classmate
 

The Classmate is the driver's station provided by FIRST. It's a portable computer.

You'll get one in your kit of parts, as you're a rookie team. Take good care of it; it's supposed to last until another driver's station is chosen...

Re: What is Classmate
 

Thanks! (boy that was quick)
So if it's a netbook why is there a usb drive with an image of it? Is that an install image incase a reinstall is neccesary? If so would it be able to (and useful to) install it on other hardware/a vm so that we have multiple computers that can run the driver station?

Re: What is Classmate
 

Yes.


You cannot use the Classmate image on any arbitrary computer. It is specific to the Classmate.

You can however install the Driver Station software on any computer you choose.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Exactly. Sometimes the classmate can go a little crazy and needs to be reimaged. There is a version of the driver's station software for other computers out there somewhere--I'm sure someone knows where that is. No need for the Classmate image for that.

Also, it looks like the Classmate will not be the only legal computer to use as a driver's station this year, but restrictions on other computers have yet to be announced.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Here.


The restrictions Eric is referring to apply to competitions. You can use any computer you like for non-competition practice, demos, etc.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Awesome!
Thanks for the info, I'm sure I'll be needing that link, and that info about the image since i manage to have to reinstall plenty even on OSs that don't go crazy by themselves (*nix doesn't like it when you delete /lib)

I'll be sure to let my team know about all the info youve given me
Thanks again

Re: What is Classmate
 

This coming year you are NOT restricted to using the classmate but any laptop you prefer subject to restrictions.

It will be addressed in the game manual. Please see 'Bill's Blog' for more information.

Ed

Re: What is Classmate
 

Just to be clear: it is unlikely there will be any restrictions for non-competition use such as practice and demos, etc etc.

For competition use, restrictions have yet to be announced.

Re: What is Classmate
 

If you haven't found this already, FIRST's control system page is a good place to learn about the sort of thing you're researching (in general).

usfirst.org/frccontrolsystem

Re: What is Classmate
 

The classmate will be your best friend. It does have the DS software on it, which is extremely useful, but our team found it much more practical for LabView (or whatever language you use). We always get caught on a lack of laptops for competition, so the classmate was what we used this year. I used it more than my computer!

Re: What is Classmate
 

Really? That sounds uncomfortable.

I guess the fact that you didn't have to type as much (due to using LabView) helped. If I had to do Java or C++ on that keyboard, I'd go insane.

Re: What is Classmate
 

No, it's painful with LabVIEW too. For your eyes. That screen is not very big, and it will work for coding, but not if you use just the Classmate. Remember, LabVIEW is graphical programming. And there's no way to zoom (for a reason). I highly recommend you get some other programming laptop with a screen that's of decent size. It doesn't have to be a big 'ol powerhouse machine of a beast, just a laptop that's decent enough.

Re: What is Classmate
 

What is that reason ?

Re: What is Classmate
 

Oh, it would just kind of mess with the visual aspect of LabVIEW. All the icons would have to get smaller if you wanted to zoom out, which would mess with the resolution in a way that would hinder the programming experience. Zooming in is similar. Plus, zooming would give the false impression that you can code sloppy by scrunching everything close together or put tons of code on one VI and it will all be ok since you can zoom to see it better.

Whenever you code on the Classmate with it's small screen, the images are the same size pixel-for-pixel. So you always wish that you could zoom out, but if you really think about it, the way LabVIEW itself looks on the block diagram, it would mess with the experience and how it's supposed to work.

Re: What is Classmate
 

3 thoughts here:


1) LabVIEW is not the only graphical computer programming language. Other graphical languages have zoom (for a reason:-)


2) The "programming experience" is not the only consideration at play:

• LabVIEW does not have a free reader (to my knowledge), so sharing screen-capture code examples on forums and in emails would benefit from zoom-in to allow greater detail.
  
  
• Discussing a section of code with a coworker standing over your shoulder trying to read the screen from 4 feet away, or making a presentation in a large room, would benefit from zoom-in.

3) Lack of zoom is a legacy issue. Zoom-in will likely never be added to LabVIEW. It would probably be a major effort to do so (LabVIEW uses raster rather than vector graphics), and not worth the investment.

Re: What is Classmate
 

You have some good points. I just see non-zooming in LabVIEW as a unique part of what LabVIEW is; the icons are static and that kind of makes the experience down to earth and more realistic.

And for presentations and explaining things, you can certainly zoom the image that you "printscreen-ed," but again, the images' resolution would go down. And with LV 2009+, they have a really nice screen capture feature ("Code Snippets"?) that allows you to view the image better with a couple of features embedded in the actual image. Unfortunately, FRC doesn't use this version. :(

Re: What is Classmate
 

I might faint....

A new forum member
- Searched before posting :ahh:
- Gave the thread a short, accurate, useful title
- Introduced himself and supplied context for his question
- Used punctuation
- Spelled well
- Used complete and grammatically correct sentences
- Clearly identified the information he hoped to learn

I wonder if I can get him to date my daughter? ;)

Well done linuxboy,
Blake

Re: What is Classmate
 

FYI - I just wrote a blog post about the entire driver station, classmate included. It's the ABC's of FIRST and today's letter is D (driver station).

I may be late on this, but thought I'd throw it out anyway.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Wow this has gotten a lot of attention, sorry I haven't responded yet (school has been busy and my teams still needs to finish our FTC robot).

I'll reply to you guys from oldest post to newest.

Nice, I will go take a look at the Blog after this and check the game manual(after kickoff). I am glad that we don't need to use just the classmate, I have learned that redundant equipment at competitions is very useful.

Thank you for that resource, it had a TON of information on it.

You mean that my eee pc will no longer be my best friend *sniff*. But seriously I love netbooks (for the most part) the keyboards are efficient for typing quickly.

Typing isn't too bad if you get used to it by necessity, for example taking notes in class and programming during frees. I am however a bit concerned about my health what with Carpal Tunnel symptoms and all.

I use text based languages but what we actually do (or have been doing for FTC) is hooking up whatever laptop we are using to a projector so a) we have a bigger screen and b) our mentors can watch my code and help out the builders at the same time

Thank you for the kudos, I appreciate it, it is always nice to feel this welcome on my first thread (which was also my first post) on a forum. I read the rules and everything (crazy right?). One of the reasons I made sure to do my post well is one of my mentors Jacob Komar (whytheheckme) expressed how useful the forum is if you use it right, so props to him. Sorry, but seeing as you live in Virginia and I live in Rhode Island I probably won't be meeting you daughter anytime soon.

Thank You! I am trying to get as much info as I can about FRC (just finished 2010's whole WPIlib manual) so extra info is always helpful!

If I didn't reply directly to your post it probably is because it is mainly about LabVIEW which I don't use and intend to use very little, therefore I don't have any relevant thoughts.

Oliver

Re: What is Classmate
 

Reaching back a bit to the zooming discussion. LV doesn't have zoom, but it is because it wasn't designed in and is difficult to retrofit. Sure it could be done, but there was and still is some concern that some will choose to use zoom as a substitute for subVIs (modular programming). I predict it will appear in a future version, and will be similar to CAD tools or other engineering drawing tools.

If you know what to search for, you can actually find an early access version of a LV variant with zoom, vector graphics and the like.

http://www.ni.com/uibuilder/

Greg McKaskle

Re: What is Classmate
 

If I may:

- the best user interface for zoom-in is to click and drag a rectangle around the portion you want to see, and when you release the mouse button it zooms into the selected area

- the best user interface for pan is to click and drag the mouse button, and the whole screen moves until you release the mouse button.

I realize the above two conflict with other uses of the mouse, and with even each other. Perhaps the alt/control/shift keys could be used in concert with the mouse. To determine its behavior.


Among the worst user interfaces:

- for pan, having to drag separate thumbs along the side and bottom of the window.

- for zoom, having to mouse up to the top of the window to repeatedly click a magnifying glass, while interlacing trips to the vertical and horizontal thumbs to re-center the screen (arrrrrrrgh!)

Re: What is Classmate
 

I would suggest getting a periphial mouse. The trackpad on the classmate is small even for me. One possible way (haven't tried it yet) to get around the zoom is to simple change the resolution. But yeah, get a mouse. It makes life easier.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Also, if the OP is using the classmate that comes in the KOP as a primary programming laptop (as much as I would advise otherwise), it would be wise to get a keyboard because, unless you have really really small fingers, you will have trouble typing any large amount of data. As mentioned before, the screen and trackpad are both small, so an external mouse is a good idea, and an additional monitor would not hurt things either.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Hi Roger,

I read the blog post, and followed the link to your blog about "Deadband" (last year's D entry).

Take a look at this article about deadband and thermostats.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Hmm, sounds like everyone thinks that the classmate is too small/slow for programming, that is kind of worrying. I guess I will see what my team can do in terms of a bigger better laptop (if only a Mac was within budget *sigh*). Maybe we can borrow someones extra desktop since I think some people have extra computers lying around. Anybody have any experience with having one of the team members bring in a desktop for programming and leaving it there? Are there benefits to having a laptop during build season or is it just so the programmers can work at home?

Re: What is Classmate
 

That is actually something I did. I used my own personal laptop for programming back at home. When came to competition, we used the classmate because that was what we were competing with (at least last year). I recommend that whatever you use, remain constant. It helps.

Re: What is Classmate
 

I can't say anything about keeping a desktop for programming, but our web team had a *very* expensive desktop sitting in our build room (also a classroom) for the entire build season and nothing bad happened to it.

Personally I would take a laptop for this kind of thing over a desktop any day just because of the portability. Many runs across the school for robot testing were avoided because the robot could be reprogrammed at our test area.

I wouldn't really worry about finding a "good" laptop for programming from. Last year we had two programmers. I worked off of the classmate, didn't really have any trouble there (except for having to find that stupid misplaced semicolon on the keyboard). The other (lead) programmer worked off of an old laptop which I think had a pentium 3 processor in it (about 1 GHz), and aside from the occasional lag when 3 programs tried to open at the same time, it worked fairly well. The software we're given will work with almost anything you throw at it, so don't stress out if you can't find a high-quality laptop.

Re: What is Classmate
 

Well I would like to ask how a team can "share" the robot. I mean I was the only active programmer last year and I ha no trouble finding time for the robot. But we are having 5+ programmers this year, how would you coordinate the programming? I honestly never worked in a group of programmers so I have no experience with sharing code and ect. There is the class mate and a laptop that can program for the robot. I used the laptop last season just for the convenience. I asked my mom for my own laptop, but I would have to wait until the end of the semester and get all A's and B's (Straight C+'s and one A or B right now) thats already 3 weeks into the build another week to ship. and that is IF I get straight A's and B's. So I can't count on that. Any advice?

Re: What is Classmate
 

If you are just talking about having each programmer with a laptop, I would say you would have to use school supplied ones or buy your own. But if you are talking about coordinating programmers, then I would suggest writing out your program in a sort of block diagram, then assigning a part of the program to each programmer then combining it together as a group on one computer (maybe a desktop or the competition laptop?). It just depends on what works for you as a team.

Re: What is Classmate
 

The problem: I have a kind of social problem. I am a very terrible at group stuff. Its not because I am shy or anything like that, its because I can't really be dependent on someone else. I can never trust someone that he can deliver. I learned this the hard way freshman year, I got a D in the class because some one back stabbed me during the final project. Well the teacher was nice enough to give me a 50% on it so I got a C in that class for the final grade. Its a personality flaw I have, I work 10 times better alone than in groups and it shows.

The programmers are at varying degrees of experience. Some being their first major project with programming, some its the usual thing for them. There will be 8, and at least 2 of them I (and some of the other members) have personal dislike toward due to their personality. They are also the worst programmers in the group.

My mentor said to make a list of objectives and the materials that we need so I'll get on to that

Re: What is Classmate
 

If you are aware of it and are not physically limited, you can change it.

Writing about it in this particular forum appears to be almost the opposite of carrying out specific constructive actions to change/correct the situation.

Blake