[Chris Hibner]

I just realized something this morning: the original autonomous simulator only worked if you were using Autonomous Iterative, which is not supported this year. Doh! I'm sure that caused some confusion.

If you go to the link I posted above, you can download the updated simulator which works with like the Autonomous Independent framework.

Here's how to use it:

1) Unzip the zip file into a new folder.
2) Double click "autonSim2.vi" to launch LabVIEW and open the simulator.
3) Push the Play button (NOTE: you will get an error the first time you push play, just press "Continue" when the error comes up. NI Reps: I'm not a LabVIEW expert so I have no idea why this error occurs or how to get rid of it - I'd appreciate some help with that).
4) Select auton0.csv when the File Open dialog pops up (Note: the file is ignored - The reason it does this is to give people an example for opening files in LabVIEW so you can control your autonomous routines with data files - but if you don't want to do that, I'm sorry about the inconvenience).
5) The simulation will start running and the robot will drive around in a big circle. Once it's finished, a "Save File" dialog will pop up. Name your output file whatever you want and press Save. If you want, you can open this file up in Excel or Matlab to make plots of the robot path data. Most of the time, the plot on the front panel of autonSim2.vi works just fine.

If you can do the above 5 steps, you're in business. Now, here's how to develop autonomous code:

1) In the autonSim2.vi block diagram, double click on the vi reference "SIM AUTON INDEP".
2) Go to the block diagram of SimAutonIndep.vi and drop your autonomous code into this block diagram. NOTE: the autonomous simulator does not use the WPI library (the simulator is running on a PC - not the cRIO). Wire your motor commands to the the Global Variables that are provided.
3) Press play on the front panel of autonSim2.vi

I HIGHLY recommend you put your autonomous software in a vi, just like I did in the example with the "BLANK AUTON" vi. This way you can use the same vi in your robot code AND the simulator. On the robot, wire the outputs of your vi into the WPI motor control blocks; in the simulation wire the outputs of your vi into the global variables.


Finally, if there are ANY questions or problems, PLEASE let me know. I'm trying to make this as useful as possible for everyone. If you are having a problem, chances are there are others having the same problem. If I can sort through everyone's issues and start fixing them, I can try and make this work better for everyone. Thanks for your help in advance.