[DavisDad]

Continued from post #34 (with edits)

Originally Posted by DavisDad

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FTC 2015/2016 Calendar

• March 11, 2015- FIRST® Announces ‘Game-Changing’ Technology Platform for use in Worldwide Student Robotics Competitions
• March 11, 2015- FTC Tech Talk video blog by Ken Johnson
• May 1, 2015- Modern Robotics Inc. website goes live
• May 5, 2015- FTC registration opens
• May ?, 2015- "We are packaging a beta of the SDK for release. We plan to have it online within this month (May). "
• June 5, 2015- Hardware and Getting Started Available
  
• "Late June"- FTC kits ship
  
• Sept 1, 2015- App Inventor and Intro to Java Available

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• September 12- FTC 2015/2016 Kickoff

My rest of the school year plan as mentor:

1. Figure out the Android controls and what components will be usable for 2016 season (e.g.: are only ZTE Speed phones allowed, or can we use a tablet for the driver interface)
2. Learn the App Inventor and Android Studio systems. Be able to help the team set up their programming environment (AI and/or Java).
3. When the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Android and Modern Robotics controls goes public this month (May), I hope to be able to figure out how all the components work together and move the programming environment set-up forward.
4. Since our team has limited financial resources, I want to figure out what is required to buy through FTC kits and what can be purchased more cheaply. I've already bought 2 used ZTE Speed phones on eBay, a USB hub & some USB-OTG cables for experimenting. I paid about $90 for the lot, and the FTC Kit costs $268.
5. Be prepared to understand and leverage the forum posts from programmers about Java Studio, App Inventor and the other computer stuff. Hopefully I'll have a test-bed programming environment assembled to allow testing the information supplied by folks knowledge about the implementation details. I know this will be difficult for our team as I'm the most knowledgeable person about programming, and I don't know much. I'm hoping if I can smooth the path by understanding enough to guide the students so they can do the semicolon coding.

I've gotten the phone to link with "Wi-Fi direct", gotten "Hello World" programs to work on a ZTE (both Android Studio & App Inventor). I'm now working on getting a game controller hooked up to the driver phone and send something to the robot phone; I'm thinking a button press on the Logitech would initiate the "Hello World" program on the robot phone.