Line Finders from Solenoid Breakout

[pfreivald]

Hey all,

We were given some advice today on our line-finders, which were working fine at home but failing at the Rally today: Wire the power (individually) to the pins on the solenoid (pneumatic) breakout, which is powered 24V instead of 12V, and thus has less likelihood of dropping the line finder voltage below 10.9 V (where they stop working).

Problem: To do this successfully, we must program LabView to turn them on (while you have to do no such thing if they are wired to the PDB).

Problem compounder: Our main student programmer and both of our programming mentors are in various places in the Caribbean for the week. (Though not together, as that would be somewhat on the strange side of things.)

Anticipated solution: Knowledge of how to turn on the line finders when they are wired to the two-pin connectors on the Solenoid breakout (which I believe goes in slot 8).

So... Could someone point me in the right direction so that we could figure out tomorrow how to get the line finders to turn 'on' in this situation?

Thanks much!

Patrick

[pfreivald]

Update: We are looking to turn on the line finders as soon as the robot is enabled (or before, if possible) using LabView, and then leave them on throughout autonomous. We don't care whether they're on or off during teleop.

Any help would be most appreciated!

[Vikesrock]

Go to this page:
http://team358.org/files/programming...2009-/LabVIEW/

Find the example that says "Single Solenoid Example". Replicate the code in the Begin.Vi section of the image in your Begin.VI. The Solenoid open will have a box under it that says "Single" that is not pictured. You should have one copy of this little code snippet for each line sensor with the appropriate channel and a different refnum name for each one.

In your autonomous VI replicate the green Solenoid VIs from the section of the image which says Teleop.VI (you don't need the joystick part). You will need one copy for each sensor with the names matching the ones you used in Begin. Instead of wiring in a button, right click on the terminal, and go to Create->Constant. Then set the constant to True.

[pfreivald]

Thank you very much!

[bstites82]

if you want to use your line sensors in autonomous mode, you need to add a solenoid set to on in begin for each channel on the pneumatics bumper. then you don't need to touch it again until finish.

[pfreivald]

Thanks, all -- they're working great!