Tips for first-year programmers

[ctccromer]

I finally put LabVIEW on my laptop yesterday and I'm currently looking around the forums to decide which controller I want to use. I'm an xbox guy, not a playstation guy, meaning I like the dpad and the left joystick switched -- it's much more comfortable! However I've read a lot of people say that the joysticks on xbox controllers don't center at 0. I don't know if it's a huge issue or an easy fix, and I don't know if there's other issues as well.
I already know it has to be a 100% wired controller and I have to download a driver for it, but that's no big deal
1) Are there any other issues with xbox controllers besides the centering issue? How do you fix this?
2) If this IS an issue large enough to mean that I shouldn't get an xbox controller, that leaves me between the Logitech F310 and F510. As far as I know, the only differences are that the F510 costs $10 more, has a 4th button in the middle, and can vibrate. Does the vibration ever come in handy that much? I could imagine it being useful for a wide variety of things, but I could also easily see us not using the feature at all.

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by ctccromer

I finally put LabVIEW on my laptop yesterday and I'm currently looking around the forums to decide which controller I want to use. I'm an xbox guy, not a playstation guy, meaning I like the dpad and the left joystick switched -- it's much more comfortable! However I've read a lot of people say that the joysticks on xbox controllers don't center at 0. I don't know if it's a huge issue or an easy fix, and I don't know if there's other issues as well.
I already know it has to be a 100% wired controller and I have to download a driver for it, but that's no big deal
1) Are there any other issues with xbox controllers besides the centering issue? How do you fix this?
2) If this IS an issue large enough to mean that I shouldn't get an xbox controller, that leaves me between the Logitech F310 and F510. As far as I know, the only differences are that the F510 costs $10 more, has a 4th button in the middle, and can vibrate. Does the vibration ever come in handy that much? I could imagine it being useful for a wide variety of things, but I could also easily see us not using the feature at all.

Programming different controllers should be relatively similar (except for button mapping differences), so I would work with the driver(s) to see what they want to use. They might even prefer joysticks to pad.

[mjcoss]

Over the years we've used a number of different controllers. And every year, I have the programming team sit down with the drivers to work out how they want to control the robot. We test drive with xbox and joysticks, and even one year a steering wheel.

We tend to always end up with joysticks for tank driving, and an xbox controller for co-pilot operations. The single xbox controller gives us a lot of flexibility with regards to buttons, and just ease of use for the co-pilot.