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Originally Posted by Jon236
What would you recommend as a tutorial training sequence to start now?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whytheheckme
Alright, kinda a topic change, but I'm looking to get on the ball ASAP. ... If I buy a LEGO NXT brick, I can use the LabView kit to program it, correct? Can I get some RJ12 connectors, and use my own sensors? What would someone recommend to me to buy to get started in the LabView arena?
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Programming the FRC controller should be very similar to programming the NXT - at least in the sense that you'll be given interface VIs for the modules you're going to be working with. Programming a cRIO is the same as programming any other LabVIEW application, the integration of the product is really what makes it so easy to use. I recommend learning how to use the LabVIEW NXT Toolkit and programming the NXT the same way you'd program an FRC robot - as a first task, learn how to drive an NXT using a single analog joystick (the single-stick "arcade" type of drive instead of a dual-stick drive) using the simple motor controls (where you tell each motor how much power to apply). That will teach you 80% of what you need to know to program an FRC controller (assuming you take the time to learn how LabVIEW works while you're doing so).
To use LabVIEW to program the NXT, install LabVIEW, then grab yourself a copy of the
LabVIEW NXT Toolkit. Once you get that installed, your LabVIEW installation will have an additional NXT palette with VI's that you need to interact with your NXT. You can get something up and running pretty quickly. Realize there are 2 modes for controlling your NXT - one that is downloaded to the NXT, the other is direct communication of the NXT. I recommend you start with the direct communication, since it's the easiest to get immediate results for testing. Then learn how to create a program that downloads to the NXT.
I really like the NXT as a LabVIEW programming platform, since you can use the "light sensor" interface to get data from any type of simple analog sensor source. I put together a demo for the FRC Championships in 2007 (and kickoff in 2008) that used an FRC KOP Accelerometer and FRC KOP Gyro, I simply cut a couple extension cables in half and used them for inputs to the NXT from the sensors (2 for accelerometer since I wanted both X and Y axis info, and 1 for the gyro). In my code I merely read the "light sensor" value of the ports I connected them to, and viola, I had the data that I could put into a 2D graph, 3D graph, 3D Picture Control, or whatever I wanted. I built the robot, wired the sensors, and programmed the whole thing in the span of half a day - then again, I'm more proficient in LabVIEW than you'll be starting off, but given a little practice you'll get better.
-Danny