Quote:
Originally Posted by jratcliff
It sounds like I have about six weeks of documentation to read at this point with only four weeks left to completion!! It's clear to me now that FIRST does not really expect any robotics teams to build a robot from ground zero in six weeks; the learning curve simply to read documentation is quite steep even for a professional in the industry much less a high school student.
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It is daunting for a new team, but it's also important not to lose focus. IFI and Kevin Watson have both provided code that essentially distills programming the robot into having to supply a handful of functions, with a fairly well-defined set of input and output variables. If you start simple and build your way up, it's pretty easy to get at least a basic robot implemented (our first year with the new C system, 2004, we managed to assemble a full controller with PID controls, shaft encoders, and a realtime clock, and that was with one mentor (myself) with decent programming experience and three students who had only done visual BASIC programming).
The other thing to remember is that there are a lot of good resources out there for new teams to use. You're visiting one of the better ones (ChiefDelphi). Look at the whitepapers. Read the forums. Ask questions. We're here to help you out. There are few problems you can run into where someone here can't help you out, and quickly.