Some Assistance is Appreciated?

[NanaLlama]

I'm new here, I think that might be obvious.

I'm not only new here but I'm new to FRC and robotics all together.

Most of our Electrical and Programming Team isn't experienced (because all the Seniors graduated) and we all have no idea how to program any sensors. Like, not at all. In any form. I think this may be a very...wide subject and will have to use a lot of explaining but, yeah.

Can someone please help?

And if you do, can you keep big words at a minimal? (I have a hard time reading.)

Thank you. :)

***
Update: we want our sensors to calculate how far we are from the goal.

[propionate]

Perhaps a better place to start would be, what do you want your sensors to do? There are many different kinds of sensors for many different needs.

Some common tasks that robotics sensors can help you achieve:
-Reading the angle of an appendage (such as an "arm") being turned by a motor
-Reading the speed that a motor is turning
-Reading the distance that your robot has traveled
-Reading the angle or acceleration of your robot
-Sensing the presence of objects at a short (or long) range

And so on. Clearly there is lots of useful data that can be gathered from sensors. Work on narrowing down your goals: figure out which tasks you want to complete using sensors.

In the mean time, the document below will provide a basic intro into how sensors are incorporated into LabVIEW:
https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-26312

[NanaLlama]

Ah,

we want our sensors to detect how far we are from the goal.

P.S. Thanks for the reply and document. Really appreciated.

[Tom Line]

Well, an ultrasonic sensor would work quite well for that.

The Maxbotix sensor you got in the KOP is good out to around 20 feet, or maybe a little more. Keep in mind that it has lag time: it works best if you're sitting still.

They are generally accurate to about an inch, and are fairly easy to wire. They attach to one of your analog inputs on the cRIO.

You do need a flat surface in front of you, but since the wall is flat this year you should be fine. Of course, if a robot drives in front of you it will return bad readings.

What many teams do is to use several buttons, each which fires at a different speed or height. Then you let the operator figure out which one to push.

Finally, you'll find excellent help with LabVIEW at frcmastery.com. They have a series of videos that are slightly outdated but very helpful. In addition, National Instruments has a wonderful series of videos and documents to help you learn. Most of the links can be found here (only because it's easier for me to remember our web page than all of NI's):

Team 1718 Links Page

Keep in mind that our FIRST controls documents are from 2012, and we intend to remove them since FIRST has asked that they be the only repository of their documentation.