Programming old robots

[Mark McLeod]

To begin with you can just keep the programs that are already on them, for driving and mechanisms they'll have workable controls already setup. (2014 robots?)

If your purpose is to teach programming, then the software for the IFI controllers will depend on the year/model, but you can cobble together freeware/student versions/old IFI sw to make a working C environment. There are a few threads on doing that, and we can help.

The cRIO controllers could be programmed in free Java tools, but the cRIO and your programming environment will have to have compatible setups for that. If you have both 2009 and 2010 robots, then they could already be imaged for Java if the team originally programmed in that, but they might have different generations of cRIO images, and would need different WPI libraries to match. Probably meaning you need to connect with another local team long enough to get your cRIO's imaged for Java, then take and freeze the current Java WPI libraries to use in the future with those cRIOs.