Help Getting cRIO Feedback

[rholokleolke]

Our team is planning on using C++ in Windriver but we are having some problems. We aren't to sure on how to get feedback from the cRIO to the computer. In previous years we would have a serial cable running from the robot to the computer and we would print out diagnostic messages using IFI's terminal window. This year we aren't sure how to do that. I tried turning on the console out but I don't seem to get anything when I try to connect either through the terminal window in Windriver or through hyperterminal in XP. We can get code to compile and the debugger works but we would like to be able to see the readings from sensors plugged into the cRIO on the computer. Any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

You can use a remote console or the dashboard.

To use the console, right click on your cRIO in the remote systems pane, and then go to target tools > console. You can print to this terminal using any std out printing method (printf, std::cout, etc). If you chose this method and are using the SimpleRobot template, I would recommend setting up a timed loop (10Hz?) to handle printing. They take a while.

You can also check out the Dashboard Data example in Windriver for how to throw data back to a Dashboard, which can run in LabView or whatever else you want to cook up.

[nathanww]

An important note here is that some low-level debug output can't be gotten from the remote console or the dashboard--you have to have a serial connection. This is because the cRIO doesn't autmatically output anything over the network connection, so if problems exist that prevent a program from loading at boot you'll need a serial cable to see what's wrong

I believe that you can use an old IFI tehter cable plus a null modem to do this.

[rholokleolke]

The null modem allows me to connect via the serial cable and cout is printing out to the terminal window. Thanks for your help.