Help with RGB Lighting on Robot

[motherrussia]

Cool, thanks for the ideas. I don't have much experience with Arduinos, so I have a couple of questions. Could we program the Arduino in Labview, if not, what language? And, does what would we use to power the Arduino?

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by motherrussia

Cool, thanks for the ideas. I don't have much experience with Arduinos, so I have a couple of questions. Could we program the Arduino in Labview, if not, what language? And, does what would we use to power the Arduino?

The arduinos are programmed using C. Lots of documentation can be found all over the internet. A good place to start either the arduino website or AdaFruits learning system, which has alot of information on the RGB lights they sell and how to hook them up to an arduino. That was linked in the post above.

As for power, I think the easiest way to power an arduino this year is to just plug it straight into the USB ports on the RoboRIO. This will allow an easy communication method between the 2 devices, and makes it so you do not have to solder any wiring. Just be sure if you do this to NOT power the lights off of that power supply, and instead use a separate 12v to 5v converter to power the lights.

[motherrussia]

Originally Posted by Thad House

The arduinos are programmed using C. Lots of documentation can be found all over the internet. A good place to start either the arduino website or AdaFruits learning system, which has alot of information on the RGB lights they sell and how to hook them up to an arduino. That was linked in the post above.

As for power, I think the easiest way to power an arduino this year is to just plug it straight into the USB ports on the RoboRIO. This will allow an easy communication method between the 2 devices, and makes it so you do not have to solder any wiring. Just be sure if you do this to NOT power the lights off of that power supply, and instead use a separate 12v to 5v converter to power the lights.

Cool. Thanks for everything.

[dyanoshak]

Originally Posted by motherrussia

Cool, thanks for the ideas. I don't have much experience with Arduinos, so I have a couple of questions. Could we program the Arduino in Labview, if not, what language? And, does what would we use to power the Arduino?

REV Robotics has the RIOduino, an Arduino-compatible board, that can plug directly into the MXP on the roboRIO.

The RIOduino operates exactly like an Arudino Uno R3 but with a few added features that tailor it to the roboRIO and an FRC robot. For example:

• Three auto selecting power options: USB, MXP, or externally (e.g. VRM)
• Place to attach RGB LED strips directly (with external power)
• I2C and UART already connected to the roboRIO (for communication)

We tried to make it as easy as possible to connect an Arduino to the roboRIO so you could get right to programming it rather than figuring out how to connect it. The great thing is you can use the vast ecosystem of Arduino examples on the RIOduino and get something working very fast.

The RIOduino is an approved active MXP board and is available now at AndyMark. Take a look at the documentation on our website: www.revrobotics.com/product/rioduino for more info on its various features.

-David

[KPSch]

Our team used an Arduino and some individually-addressable RGB lights on last year's robot. We used some of the digital IO pins from the cRIO that told the Arduino which of the pre-programmed light patterns to run. The cRIO would also tell the Arduino our alliance color so the lights could display a red or blue pattern.