Thread: Off season controls projects
View Single Post
  #2   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 05-03-2012, 02:00 PM
taichichuan's Avatar
taichichuan taichichuan is offline
Software Mentor
AKA: Mike Anderson
FRC #0116 (Epsilon Delta)
Team Role: Mentor
  
Join Date: Feb 2010
Rookie Year: 2010
Location: Herndon, VA
Posts: 328
taichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud oftaichichuan has much to be proud of
Send a message via AIM to taichichuan
Re: Off season controls projects
Quote:
Originally Posted by DjScribbles View Post
I am a new programming mentor in FRC (this was my rookie year), and my team has never used much in the way of sensors beyond limit switches (as far as I know) before this year. I was also the primary programmer for the robot this year, because our team never had much interest in programming, and I didn't know enough about the environment to learn and teach at the same time, but I want to change that as much as I can.

I'm looking for any and all controls projects that maybe valuable for kids to learn, to help our team (and area teams) build a more competitive field in south-west Michigan.

Here are a few ideas I've come up with:
Path-following drive train: Building a drive train using encoders with the ability to follow a predetermined path reliably.
Shooter Speed control: How to close the loop for shooter wheels.
Light Sensor Line following: Using light sensors to track a line on the floor.
Game piece detection: using optical sensors to track your manipulation of game pieces (such as ball possession).
Camera Tracking: Using the axis cams to track rectangles, extracting info from the image such as distance, angle, etc.

So, what else do people do? What has been useful in the past? What do people think will be useful going forward?


My goal in all of this is to get with some other engineers in the area, and host any interested kids from area teams (we have about 10 teams in the area), to help populate our area with good robots and great programmers!
Those are all pretty good projects and right in line with the topics that our software team will be working in the off season. They encompass many key topics including encoders, digital and analog I/O, using the camera for range detection, etc. Many of these can be done on processors like Arduinos that do not require access to a cRio. That always seems to be the long pole in the tent. The cRio is a great little processor, but the cost makes it prohibitive for having more than a couple for use in off-season development. The Arduino is cheap and there's now a connection board that allows you to use the digital sidecar with an Arduino-compatible library. We used an Arduino on our bot this season for the ball shooter angle and RPM reading on the shooter wheel. It worked well for us.

So, I'd say you're right on track with your projects. Being able to get most of them working will prepare your team quite well for almost any challenge.

Good luck,

Mike