Playing Sound Through Computer

[danruff5]

This year our robot has two large pistions that loads an elastic to hit the ball to shoot it. If the pressure is low the pistons take a long time fully lock the pistons. I have a switch to detect when its in the correct location to retract them before fireing.

During pratice the idea came up to inform the drivers of when its ready to fire. However it takes a long time to have to look down at the computer to the Smartdashboard. The idea came up to make a sound play! This sounds really cool but many of the programmers on our team have been doing lots of research on how to do this.

We have found a way to play .wav files through a simple java program. However it requeires javax. So my question is how do we get javax into the robot? OR: How do we get the computer to play a sound file from the robot?

Thank you! I think that this is really cool idea and we have plans to make different sounds at different times. The robot will takl to the drivers!

Also... sorry for my lack of spelling ability.

[NWChen]

There are a few other factors (like loud music blaring in the background of every match) that you may want to take into account before having your robot or operator console play sound. See this discussion.

Have you considered force feedback on your joysticks/controllers or adding bright lights to your operator console that change color when ready?

[Jon Stratis]

It might be difficult to hear a sound during the match... the arena gets pretty loud!

Another option would be to include some simple LED strips on the robot (You can usually find some cheap red/blue ones in the Walmart Auto section). Hook them up to a spike, and your programmers can have them flash or turn on when the switch is pressed. At least that way the LED's are right where the drivers are already looking!

[danruff5]

There are a few other factors (like loud music blaring in the background of every match) that you may want to take into account before having your robot or operator console play sound. See this discussion.

I have read that discussion.

For the sound issue I was thinking about using headphones for the drivers is they could not hear.

I also wanted to have this as a "cool" factor to have our robot talk.

Have you considered force feedback on your joysticks/controllers or adding bright lights to your operator console that change color when ready?

We are using an xbox controller, I dont think it has any force feedback (but I might be wrong).

Thank you for the fast response!!

[danruff5]

What I think I have to do is have another program running on the computer. The robot would then send a signal to the computer which the other program would interpret it and then play a sound file based on that.

What would I have to do to make the other program and make the robot communicate with it (unless you have another idea).

Thanks!

P.S. I still want to do this because I think it will be really cool (not necessarily for the competition).