Make Robot Glow with Alliance Colors Automatically

[ekapalka]

Is there something like Get Alliance in C++ as well?

[ykarkason]

Yeah, there is, something like that:

DriverStation.GetInstance->GetAlliance()

Even though the syntax may be wrong, I'm a little rusty with C++...

[Chris Hibner]

We did this on team 308 in 1999 (the first year of alliances). We had a 6" x 12" grid of LEDs on each side of the robot that we could switch from red to blue. That was the only year we did it, but it looked great.

[MikeE]

One of our students developed something similar this year with SPI bus driven tri-color LED strips running under Arduino control.

• During the initial disabled period before the match the LED strips show a slowly chaning rainbow pattern
• During autonomous the alliance color would flash along the LED strips
• In teleop we would use each side as a bargraph to display the wheel encoder readings for each side of tank drive
• On successful climb & dump the driver operates a switch and the LEDs show the team's "tie dye" colors in a flashing pattern
• We had a few other modes programmed but didn't use them in matches
• 4 DIO pins were used to communicate "mode" and 2 PWM to transmit "analog" values from the cRIO to the Arduino

Definitely the prettiest robot I've been associated with.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by ekapalka

Is there something like Get Alliance in C++ as well?

There is. In C++ see DriverStation::GetAlliance(). In Java it's DriverStation.getAlliance()