Help Programming Our Shooter In LabView

[DSager3]

Hi all, hope you can help.

Tonight my team finished construction of our elevator system and shooter. Our elevator is the popular poly cord run on pulleys design and our shooter (pictures attached) has one wheel powered by a BaneBot motor(not in the picture) and a controllable hood powered by a window motor. We are satisfied with its performance right now, but we think that if we were to mount the shooter on a lazy susan and use the camera to track the backboards and it automatically adjust the lazy susan and shooter hood accordingly, it would take our robot to the next level. Only problem is that our programmers are relatively inexperienced. We are programming in LabView and any help of how to code this function, or even where to being is greatly appreciated.

Thank you and best of luck to all teams.
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[Alan Anderson]

I suggest you start with the Rectangular Target Processing example in LabVIEW. Once you have the camera detecting and tracking the target, you can try to use the measured position of the target to decide which way and how far to move your shooter's turntable.

[pfreivald]

I just learned that a good number of the features in the Vision Assistant are not supported if you have an 8-slot CRio, though... Which, judging by your team number, you have.

I have no idea what to do about it, unfortunately.

[Tom Line]

I have a couple questions for you to think about.

I don't see any feedback from your shooter (yet). Consider: how will you insure your shooter is running the speed you want?

Next, that window motor runs at around 80 rpm. That means it wants to rotate once a second. You have it direct driving your hood. Are you planning on having two hood positions, each using a positive stop? If not, you may be in trouble. It will be difficult for your human player to try to manipulate that hood to a precise angle while your robot is on the field without some type of automatic feedback.

The included rectangular vision example is a good start, though it is complex. You will also find an NI whitepaper on it's use here on Chiefdelphi.

[Greg McKaskle]

The example that was mentioned works fine on the 8-slot, but as mentioned, some of the more advanced features were stripped out for space savings.

More Details:
Between the LV8.6 and LV2011 releases, the vision module grew by over 5MB. Many of those new features, and some of the existing ones were more for machine inspection than for robotics. The imaging tool installs the smaller, more stripped down, version of IMAQ on the 8-slot, and the complete edition on the 4-slot. There are some additional differences besides vision as well.

I don't have a complete list of what was removed, but we did our best to leave in a rich set for robotics applications. We received no negative feedback during beta, but if we discover that a feature is badly needed, we'll do our best to recompose it again.

Greg McKaskle

[Larry Lewis]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

The example that was mentioned works fine on the 8-slot, but as mentioned, some of the more advanced features were stripped out for space savings.

More Details:
Between the LV8.6 and LV2011 releases, the vision module grew by over 5MB. Many of those new features, and some of the existing ones were more for machine inspection than for robotics. The imaging tool installs the smaller, more stripped down, version of IMAQ on the 8-slot, and the complete edition on the 4-slot. There are some additional differences besides vision as well.

I don't have a complete list of what was removed, but we did our best to leave in a rich set for robotics applications. We received no negative feedback during beta, but if we discover that a feature is badly needed, we'll do our best to recompose it again.

Greg McKaskle

Greg,
Would you be able to help to provide a list of what the differences between the 8 slot and 4 slot installation or is there a way for teams to determine this? This would be useful to document for the teams that are using LabVIEW this year.

[Greg McKaskle]

This isn't just a LV issue. The IMAQ library is shared by all languages. As I stated, I don't have exact symbols that were removed. I"m sure that the list of missing symbols can be built, but I don't have cRIOs with me at the moment.

Greg McKaskle

[DSager3]

Thank you all for your help! I'll relay the information to our programmers on Monday. In regards to the shooter, the hood is directly driven by the window motor and we plan on using two limit switches to limit the range of our hood. Also, our programmers drastically reduced the speed of the motor (not completely sure how they did it, I'm more of a mechanical guy) so the operator can control the hood angle more easily. If possible, we want to take out the human error of a person controlling the hood angle and have that done automatically.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

I don't have a complete list of what was removed, but we did our best to leave in a rich set for robotics applications. We received no negative feedback during beta, but if we discover that a feature is badly needed, we'll do our best to recompose it again.

I think part of the problem was that beta teams were mostly reconstituting old code (if they were testing vision at all). You use a lot more functions while developing and testing code then makes it into the final product. For this case, I'm not sure the beta test was a valid test.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I think part of the problem was that beta teams were mostly reconstituting old code (if they were testing vision at all). You use a lot more functions while developing and testing code then makes it into the final product. For this case, I'm not sure the beta test was a valid test.

That appears to be the case here. Everything we've tried thus far failed to build... We spend almost two weeks uninstalling and reinstalling LabView, checking network connections and Windows updates, etc, etc, all thinking that the problem was on our end.

To find that the problem was both known and on NI's side of things is discouraging -- one would have hoped that functionality differences between versions would have been communicated...

Was it? Did we miss it somewhere?

[one4robots]

Originally Posted by DSager3

Thank you all for your help! I'll relay the information to our programmers on Monday. In regards to the shooter, the hood is directly driven by the window motor and we plan on using two limit switches to limit the range of our hood. Also, our programmers drastically reduced the speed of the motor (not completely sure how they did it, I'm more of a mechanical guy) so the operator can control the hood angle more easily. If possible, we want to take out the human error of a person controlling the hood angle and have that done automatically.

Your design looks remarkably similar to ours! Great minds think alike! Our turret, angle of elevation, and speed of shooter will all be software controlled. Our programmers have been working on target recognition very hard, and I think they have it down. I'll mention this thread and have them comment.

[DSager3]

Originally Posted by one4robots

Your design looks remarkably similar to ours! Great minds think alike! Our turret, angle of elevation, and speed of shooter will all be software controlled. Our programmers have been working on target recognition very hard, and I think they have it down. I'll mention this thread and have them comment.

Thank you! Our programmers say that the LabView file or a screenshot of the target recognition code would be extremely helpful.