RoboCon 1.01 (control robot from PC)

[rbayer]

It took some work and some massive amounts of Coke and Mountain Dew, but I just finished RoboCon, a program that will allow you to control a robot from your PC. There are two main components to RoboCon:

1. The DLL and LIB files. These can be included in your own programs to create a custom-control application specifically for your robot. Check out the "Writing your own..." document for more information

2. ConSample. A sample application that uses RoboCon. It is very minimal, but ConSample will allow you to control a robot using your PC.

PLEASE read the README. It contains important information on how to make ConSample work.

As always, my programs are available at:
http://FIRSTprograms.tripod.com/Programs.htm
-and-
The whitepapers here

Let me know what you think!

--Rob

[VanWEric]

Holy Bajeesus.

[Adrian Wong]

Excellent work! I really can't get into the code until I get home later tonight, but I do have one quick question.

Is there any way to control the robot wirelessly from a stationary computer, either via the data being transmitted via the OI/RC radio link; or just connecting the OI and RC by a tether, placing both on the robot, and having an PC/RC radio link?

My apologies if you answered this in the whitepaper ZIP, but I can't open the file from the current computer. I'll be sure to look at it tonight, though.

[rbayer]

You should be able to do it wirelessly if you have RS-232 radios lying around. The programming/debugging ones should work if you have those.

Unforunately, I don't know how to get this to work without an OI, so you will still need to tether/radio that to the RC, but as you said, you can just place it in the robot.

Don't forget to send the "RoboCon RC.bsx" program to the RC or absolutely nothing will happen.

[rbayer]

I'm at 14 downloads and only a few responses. PLEASE post stuff. I want to know whether I should continue spending my time writing programs for you people or if it's just a waste of my time.

I am especially interested in hearing from programmers who try to write their own app using RoboCon, but I want to hear from everybody.

Thanks in advance!

--Rob

[MacZealot]

I actually tried roboemu but i still haven't had the chance to actually figure IT out!

lol been too busy working on websites.

You think I could take a look at that sourcecode? I'd spend much more time on it if it worked on my work machine

[rbayer]

What source code? Source for RoboEmu is included in the RoboTools zip file. Otherwise, source code can always be found at my website:
http://FIRSTprograms.tripod.com/Programs.htm

And now we're up to 15 downloads of RoboCon...

[Adrian Wong]

Trust me, your RoboCon program will be very useful to a robotics project our club is doing. We'll have a website up in a few days for the project, and your RoboCon program just filled a gaping hole in our control system diagram.

(It's for an autonomous robot. We wanted some way to have a computer program control it, and we were going to settle for placing a stripped down laptop on the robot itself. This should resolve a few problems, because having a stationary computer for telemetry is much more useful.)

[rbayer]

Excellent. Let me know if you run into any trouble and I'd be happy to help. I wrote the documentation in about 15mins, so it's not overly polished (I haven't even read it myself). For now, my first priority was just getting it out so people could start thinking about stuff.

A word of warning: make sure the time between calls to "update" is not more than 1/20th of a second. This shouldn't be a problem, but try to keep it in mind.

[jrukes]

I didn't even know you could send data to the RC directly from a PC. That is awesome! This will allow teams to prototype multiple driver stations before they even touch a soldering iron.

Any plans to post the communication protocol between the RC and the OI? I'd prefer to use Visual Basic, out of habit- not because it's better. Specifically, I'd need the following information:

1) COM port settings (Baud Rate,Parity,Databit,Stopbit)
2) What is the format for the data sent to the RC? I'm assuming this is an X-byte array.
3) What is the format for the data received from the RC? Again, I'm guessing this is an X-byte array. I'm thinking it would look similar to the Dashboard port specification.

I would appreciate any info you can provide. I think this would make a great project for the software team to better understand how the control system functions.

Thanks,
Jason

[Jnadke]

You can't communicate directly from your PC to the robot controller.

He's still using the operator interface, IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THAT ALREADY.

[miketwalker]

You probably want to post that on FIRST Codex, cause then it'll be available for all teams to use and see, since FIRST Codex is trying to put together resources for teams for help on programming. By the way, VERY nice code! I'm impressed. Keep up the great work.

http://www.first-codex.net/

[rbayer]

Originally posted by Jnadke
You can't communicate directly from your PC to the robot controller.

He's still using the operator interface, IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THAT ALREADY.

half true, half not. Your PC does communicate directly with the RC via the Programming port. The only reason why you still need the OI is that otherwise the master uP stops execution of the Stamp when it doesn't detect a signal from the OI. Strictly speaking, the OI just sits there. In fact, it doesn't even send any important data to the RC as the only things that are present in the Serin command are the sensors and switches.

If anybody knows how to fool the RC into thinking it has a signal, let me know.

I haven't tried to reverse-engineer the packets yet as the documentation specifically says NOT to plug the tether into a computer and I am terrified of frying my serial ports. If anyone has an old computer they are willing to try this on, let me know and I'll send you some code to run and ask you to return the output to me.

--Rob

[AJ Quick]

I am so glad we are on the same team.

[VanWEric]

I think i'll be fooling around with roboCon tomarrow or at least sometime this week. I'd be happy to run those tests for you, seeing as that these computers at school are made from a solid mass of kevlar, and could probably withstand anything. That, and i need to distract IMS with problems other than taking my privalages away one by one.
Does anyone know where to find a copy of the program running on the stamp located within the OI? That may help this effort greatly.
Lastly, what exactly is coming out of the computer? Is this a stream of data that can go over the modems? You may be able to replace the OI with a comp, and leave the sensor checks on the stamp code. Just theorizing, don't tear my logic apart to gruesomely.
Any who, send me the code you want me to test, and ill have at it. I'm assuming you just want to monitor it on the serial port, I think I can handle it ( i hope ).