Thread: Swerve Drive
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Unread 23-11-2011, 10:17
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Re: Swerve Drive

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber View Post
This is interesting, I was under the impression that the STAMP did not have math libraries included whereas the PIC did. I know the programmer on 27 was very happy to have the math libraries on the PIC. Of course, not only is this a long time ago but it was also when I was much younger and wasn't really paying too close attention to him so I could be very much mistaken.

It does show how far the controllers in FRC have come though.
To use the STAMP2 you had to get into the PBASIC Zen Mode. It was all unsigned 16 bit math and it tooks some discipline to keep from hosing yourself. I can recall pulling my hair out trying to count/balance/place the nested parens (which I eventually gave up on -- I memorized the evaluation order of operators and basically kept parens down to the absolute minimum - took some doing but it was a time and bug saver in the end)

As to being glad to see the STAMP2 in the rear view mirror? You bet. It was some much easier to do things like scale a joystick using signed math. Oh and the PIC chip was many many times faster, more memory for variables, more code space (remember program slots? Ugh! that was painful).

Joe J.
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