Super Rookies

[CeeCee McShane]

We are Team 3585 in Claremont NH, and we are struggling with getting our programmers up and running in Labview. We've used the NI documentation and online tutorials, but are looking for some quick start instruction. Any suggestions? Our programmers are getting pretty discouraged! Thanks!

[celenacrews]

http://www.frcmastery.com/labview-fo...robot-success/

[Ian McShane]

I am a team member of 3585 too, and as a programmer am wondering what the 2 different parts of the programming(Front panel, and Block diagram) mean, what they do, and how you program them using the pallete. I did FLL last year so if you can give me an idea of how(if at all) NI Labview compares to NXT, that would be helpful.


Please help, I am completly lost.

[tagayoff]

Go to theFRCMastery site
http://www.frcmastery.com/
and go through the 7 steps to robot sucess.

[WizenedEE]

The front panel shows dials and switches and buttons. It's the inputs and outputs of your function, generally. However, for FRC you don't ever really use the front panel for most things, because the inputs and outputs are done with just the "run motor" and "get joystick" commands.

The block diagram is where the programming is done. All the thin lines are called "wires" and they connect "functions." The wires should be a familiar concept to what NXT has (I think, I just use LabVIEW for programming NXT). They are variables: numbers that you modify with functions. Functions are basically things to modify the variables, but for FRC you'll use many that take the wires in and run motors using them.

For example, when you go to robot main, find teleop.vi. In there, you'll see some sort of "get joystick" with a wire coming out of it, which goes into an "arcade drive" function. The get joystick function returns wires that give the x and y positions of the joystick, and the arcade drive function takes x and y positions and runs the motors. These are a perfect match, so all their wires go together.

I suppose you're probably wondering what the purple wires going into the functions are also. These are "devise references", and basically tell the arcade drive function which motors to run (is it the ones connected to port 2 or port 3?)

[Greg McKaskle]

You already have some good advice. In NXT, the only thing you build are diagrams. The diagrams look a bit different, but work basically the same. In reality, the framework of FRC allows you to build your program without ever editing a panel. You may find it very useful to place some control or indicators on the panel so that you can see and change values as your robot is running.

Please look at the FRCMastery training, work through some examples, and ask plenty of questions.

Greg McKaskle

[SuperS_5]

Originally Posted by tagayoff

Go to theFRCMastery site
http://www.frcmastery.com/
and go through the 7 steps to robot sucess.

Don't forget the 2010 videos. They offer a lot of help on LabVIEW basics.

[MaxMax161]

This is an analogy that I was taught that I think will help you with understanding what the front panel and block diagram are if you don't already.

In a car the dashboard/driver's seat is like the front panel, it contains all your inputs in to the engine (wheel, gas peddle, knobs, ect) and all your outputs from the engine (speedometer, RPM, check engine, ect). That's what the front panel is, it (in addition to joysticks and stuff like that) is your interface with your program.

The block diagram is like a view under the hood. When you look under the hood you see various units and different types of wires and tubes connecting them. Each component (engine, radiator, oil pump, ect) is like a .vi and each wire or tube is like a wire.

Another important thing to know is that the type of things you can do and create on the front panel and block diagram are different. For example you can only create a light or switch on the front panel (a corresponding block will automatically appear on the block diagram), and can only create wires, or references to other .vis (like joystick get) on the block diagram.

After that if you want to learn more about labview dissect the examples of code that FIRST gives you and just click around a lot. Hopefully this was helpful and not overly long winded, good luck!

[Ian McShane]

Thank you everyone. This is great.

[MaxMax161]

Any time, happy to help. If you have any more questions, or need help with somthing more specific feel free to shoot me an email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.