Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Ross
This is definetly active. In addition this would be illegal in any previous year, as a motor controller is not allowed to connect to a custom circuit. It would be legal for you to make a seperate board and have the roboRIO communicate the values it's sending to the motor controllers to the seperate board over another communication method (I2C, SPI, CAN, serial, ethernet, etc).
Given how hard it is to see items on the robot during a match, a better option might be to have either the roboRIO log the data you want to it's internal flash or send the data to the dashboard. Both the LabVIEW dashboard and the SFX dashboard support logging by default.
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Joe, I like your first suggestion to use a serial message to another device (maybe a PCDuino) to display our commands on the robot. We can set a message buffer equal to the motor (and servo) commands then send it to the PCDuino maybe somewhere high for best 'line of sight'. This would also help us debug in the pit.
We do want to try placing the commands on the robot this year with indicators such as colored LEDs. In previous years, we have spent many hours reconfiguring the dashboard but we NEVER look down at it during competition. Even the coach is too busy to look down. This way the entire pit crew in the stands can follow the driver and operator commands to educate them on component failures. This might expedite getting the robot ready for the next match.