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Unread 28-12-2006, 16:07
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Matt Krass Matt Krass is offline
"Old" and Cranky. Get off my lawn!
AKA: Dark Ages
FRC #0263 (Sachem Aftershock)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Rookie Year: 2002
Location: Long Island, NY
Posts: 1,187
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Re: pic: Thousands of manhours of work... coming '07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Billfred View Post
As awesome as it sounds, it kinda feels like a bell and/or whistle (though I've never used one on a robot, so I could be dead wrong). How hard would it be for someone to integrate the LCD control code in with the existing code, assuming they have both?
Well so far we're doing pretty good on memory constraints, so its pretty easy to just leave the LCD code there and if there's no LCD, you ignore it. We're looking in to making all the available I/O pins available on headers externally accessible, but protected against damage, for future "upgrades" and expansion.

Our goal is for Team X to get the base unit, set it up, and find it so useful they want the feedback LCD, so they get one of those, plug it in and power cycle the device. The box will detect an LCD and initialize it, and it's done. At worst, they may need to connect a serial cable and do a firmware update we provide. At the same time, all of the wiring and programming is available for they're modification if they want, and documented.

Quote:
Originally Posted by chris31 View Post
It wouldnt be to hard since they already have a development board set up and it probably has extra pins that they could use to run an LCD screen.
I'm already working on an LCD display driver and library of code on an identical dev board in my workshop. It's working quite well and I'm re-implementing a simplified printf for it. It's actually a pretty easy hook up.
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Matt Krass
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I'm a FIRST relic of sorts, I remember when we used PBASIC and we got CH Flightsticks in the KoP. In my day we didn't have motorized carts, we pushed our robots uphill, both ways! (Houston 2003!)