Programming Languages

[Hailfire]

Is C++ also used in the competitions? Or not?

[Jeff Waegelin]

Depends. Not on the bots, but some people have made dashboard programs, databases, and Palm scouting apps in C.

[rbayer]

Same as above. All we use in the comp is PBASIC, but most of the little utilities people have written are either in C, C++, or VB. PBASIC is useless for anything other than robots.

[Ian W.]

yeah, me and dan just finished our really cool (and completely unneeded) dashboard program. it's probably the first of it's kind. C++ to grab the data, Flash to show the data. so our program looks much cooler than all of yours (or so i'm told). the only problem is that the program seems to start grabbing incorrect data from the robot after a while, but i'm atributing that to the fact that the battery voltage was at about 8.6 or so when we noticed that. the strange part is that it always did the same pattern, just sometimes it took longer to screw up then other times. very strange :/.

[Jeff Waegelin]

If you get your program working right, could you post it in the white papers? I'd be interested in something like that. If you prefer to keep it to yourselves, though, I won't mind too much.

[JonathanE]

I also would like to see some C++ source for a dashboard viewer. I have no experience with the Windows API or any of Microsoft's APIs... This would help a lot, since I am expecting to have to write a dash viewer this year...

Also: What types of data are people storing in database programs for scouting? I have heard several references to teams writing programs in VB to run on their Pocket PCs that they can take around to scout for alliances... What is the purpose of this? I am guessing that teams would record what the functions of the other teams robots were, etc...

[Matt Leese]

Originally posted by JonathanE
I also would like to see some C++ source for a dashboard viewer. I have no experience with the Windows API or any of Microsoft's APIs... This would help a lot, since I am expecting to have to write a dash viewer this year...

Also: What types of data are people storing in database programs for scouting? I have heard several references to teams writing programs in VB to run on their Pocket PCs that they can take around to scout for alliances... What is the purpose of this? I am guessing that teams would record what the functions of the other teams robots were, etc...

Here you go:
http://www.bontragers.net/first/FirestormDashboard.zip

I'll warn you that I really haven't touched that code since 2000. The format has changed slightly but that's just a relabeling of one of the data elements. I used to have a web page with some more information about it but I can't find it. I hope that's helpful in some way.

Matt

[JonathanE]

Thanks a lot! I will attempt to convert it to 2003 standards. The only change that was made was the change from p1_wheel to p1_x on one of the bits, I think.