Legality of Arduino Programming

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by Aaron.Graeve

This has already been stated, but yes, Arduinos can be used as co-processors on the robot. You mentioned using the Arduino to control LEDs. This was the system we used to control our AdaFruit lights this year. We had a simple C program that was wipped up by one of the members to respond to a few robot inputs and output the robot state in LED form for our drivers(We just used a few Digital outs and ran them to a few Arduino pins).

We briefly discussed using the serial port on the cRIO for this, but we decided a few lost outputs compensated for the removed protocol pain.

If you are familiar with Java, C is not that different. Also, why is the FRC support of a language important to you?

I hope this helps.

I am guessing FRC language support is important because he wants to be able to use his knowledge of Arduino Java as a basis for learning FRC Java, or vice versa. But yes, you definitely make a good point when saying Java is very similar to C. Personally, I prefer C because it is used more often in the real world. Our programming team uses labview, though we will be changing over to Java or C within 2 years. The cRio's serial port didn't even cross our minds (If you saw how buried the cRio was on our bot you could guess why) but I really like that idea. It would be a neat learning curve for the electrical team and programming team!

Our new-for-IRI arduino lights are just 12 orange LEDs soldered together in a strip . I am strongly considering getting some of the adafruit RGBLED strips for our next bot (I think these are the ones you are talking about). Can you post your code, please? I am very interested in how your system works, as from what I can tell it works completely different from most other bots.

[jwallace15]

As Evan said, it would be best to get the MEGA 2560 or the Due because of more outputs. I just bought a 2560 because my UNO was too small.

However, if you have an UNO and have shields for it, please note that not all shields for the UNO work on the MEGA.

However, the UNO may work for you. 33 has an uno controlling their LED's.

The UNO has 5 PWM outputs that serve as part of the 13 digital outputs, wheras the MEGA 2560 has 13 PWM outputs in which 2 serve as part of the 32(?) digital outputs.

If by chance you would want to have it so that, say if your shooter is at 2000+ rpm and you want some LED's to turn on, there are 6 analog inputs on the UNO and 16 on the MEGA.

I can't help you on writing Java or C programs for it, though. I just use whatever language that is in the Arduino software (95% sure it's called Sketch).

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by jwallace15

However, the UNO may work for you. 33 has an uno controlling their LED's.

The LED's are Shift Brite's from SparkFun.

They are essentially 32-bit shift registers with 10-bit per color 3 color PWM controls (and 2 extra bits). So we chain them together and use 3 Arduino pins for all of the LED's. We have the software setup for a 4x32bit chain, and there are 8 LED's, so the second half of the string is a 1-cycle old mirror of the first half of the string.

The cRio uses 3x digital lines (relay 6,7,8 forward channel) to send a 3-bit command word to the Arduino. The lines are driven via a shift register in the DSC, and are high side driven, so we have pulldown resistors added also. I believe the arduino uses the 6v power supply on the digital sidecar but I could be wrong.

The cRio runs a state machine to get the command word (0-7) and outputs it on the 3 bit output. The Ardiuno turns the command word back into a number. The color of each of the 4 LEDs is defined for each mode, there is no further logic in the arduino now, although mode 0 used to fade between colors during disabled mode.

[Aaron.Graeve]

I was not the member who spearheaded the lights this year, but my close friend did. I will talk to him and our lead mentor to see if we are releasing the full code and scematics and, if so, when. I will get back to you on that soon.

Also, yes, those were the lights in question.

[otherguy]

As evanperryg mentioned there are multiple ways of connecting the LEDs to the arduino.

If you only want to turn a few LEDs on and off, then wiring them directly to an arduino is the easiest way to go. Unfortunately it's the most labor intensive as far as wiring goes. THe down side being that you'll need 1 output pin on the arduino per LED unless you design some interfacing electronics to go with it.

If you want multicolor with lots of different patterns then you're going to want to use an LED strip which is talked to over a serial protocol (like I2C for example). THis is the easiers option in my oppinion, especialyl since there are already libraries which handle the majority of the software. Wiring is simple, just 3 wires to conenct between the strip and the arduino.
Edit: I link to this in the other thread, but if you do go this route, there are plenty of good code examples for arduino alread.

I've described how to wire everything up in another thread recently

I can't help you on writing Java or C programs for it, though. I just use whatever language that is in the Arduino software (95% sure it's called Sketch).

The arduino programming language is based on C/C++. Sketches are what the project/program files are referred to.

[Aaron.Graeve]

Our driver and elecrical captain saw my previous posts and pointed out an Arduino use I forgot. This past year, we used an Arduino UNO and a stripped out RC controller to make a USB RC car controller for our driver. We used the Arduino as a form of a reverse USB Chicklet from the IFI days. The driver station recognised it as a PS3 controller, and programming was unaffected. I think we are putting together and Instructables How-to on it.

Using an Arduino in place of the Cypress board can remove some of the hassle. We are looking into other ways of using an Arduino for things other than LEDs. They are incredibly usefull as co-processors of all forms.