[techhelpbb]

The other problem with testing with the real cRIO is access.

Even if you can send code to a remote repository via HTTP or FTP, someone really has to be nearby to monitor the robot.

Even if you can monitor the robot with video and capture the control terminal's display and controls, what happens when the battery dies? Even if you can build a float charger to keep the batteries alive, someone really needs to be there to put a stop to things if they get out of hand.

Even as a veteran team we can't really expect someone to be available at all hours of the day and night for this purpose. We have sent whole robots home with people but obviously even a control system board with a few motors is not exactly something you want to haul all over with you.

Having an emulator like this allows people to tinker when they feel like without dragging resources of all types into it.

For now the educational advantage is that the students with the least fundamentals can use this whenever they have time and without any sort of major outside pressure.

The more advanced students programming this emulator get to learn the details of the control systems. Things like how the analog joysticks have noise and why that noise is there. After all, to make a decent simulation you want to simulate even the undesirable characteristics of the system.

In effect the more advanced students are challenging the other students who are reaching their level and teaching themselves in the process. The people using the emulator can in turn learn from the emulator the sort of subtle things that they can expect when programming the real thing.

Or course in the real world there will be additional sources of problems. Things like stuck actuators, impacts with objects, overheating speed controls, motors changing RPM on various surfaces in various directions, delays introduced by the wireless network, users smashing the joystick around, and batteries dropping dead. Hard to simulate some of that. However, that just means that after this level they are prepared with a solid foundation to chase that sort of quirk.

Additionally this provides a sort of proof of concept that is good in cooperative environments like ours where we have enough students for multiple divisions of labor. If there's doubt that a chuck of code isn't basically functional we can toss it into simulation and settle doubts.