Super Rookies

[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