[FTC]: New Android Control System

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by DavisDad

Modern Robotics Inc. is on-line:

Only 1 day after April

[DavisDad]

Jerry McManus has posted an excellent guide and also frequently asked questions (FAQ) post at the FTC forum:

Feeling overwhelmed? Start here.

Technology forum FAQ

Thanks Jerry! Great stuff!

[DavisDad]

Modern Robotics Inc. registration is up. I've registered and received an email with info below:

Welcome to Modern Robotics Inc.

Thank you for registering with Modern Robotics, Inc. When you are sign in to your account you will be able to check out the latest products and receive news updates as well easily place and track shipments.

Modern Robotics is proud to be working with FIRST and Qualcomm on the new FTC competition electronics control system for 2015 – 2016.

We are also partnering with MATRIX Robotics to supply the all new MATRIX FTC Competition Set for the 2015 – 2016 FTC season.

The new FTC Competition Set, endorsed by FIRST, features more than 750 parts and new larger “C” beams, new 12v battery and components, 4 all new 12v motors with built-in encoders, new metal gears and much more. MATRIX is the only true 3D building system that users find easy to build with and it promotes good engineering practices.

Take a look at MATRIX at http://www.modernroboticsinc.com/mat...ompetition-kit

In addition, all FTC teams registered with FIRST for the 2015 – 2016 season will receive discounts when ordering from www.modernroboitcsinc.com

[DavisDad]

This post is intended to summarize what is know about the new control system in order to plan work for next season.

I'm basing this mostly on posts with knowledgeable information at the Chief Delphi & FTC forums:

MattRain (Chief Delphi)
levydev (Chif Delphi)
Tom Eng, FTC Engineer (FTC)
Jerry McManus (FTC)
FTC Cause and Effect, FTC Staff (FTC)
ChiefCT

Thank you Matt, David, Tom, Jerry & JoAnn for your help in the forums! Much appreciated! Apologies to anyone I've missed.

FTC 2015/2016 Calendar

• March 11, 2015- FIRST® Announces ‘Game-Changing’ Technology Platform for use in Worldwide Student Robotics Competitions
• March 11, 2015- FTC Tech Talk video blog by Ken Johnson
• May 1, 2015- Modern Robotics Inc. website goes live
• May 5, 2015- FTC registration opens
• May ?, 2015- "We are packaging a beta of the SDK for release. We plan to have it online within this month (May). "
• June 5, 2015- Hardware and Getting Started Available
• Sept , 2015- App Inventor and Intro to Java Available

to be completed later...

[RecycledElectro]

Originally Posted by DavisDad

What I don't know:

As you posted later on, the Modern Robotics site (http://modernroboticsinc.com/) has a lot of this info. I am reposting it here to make it easier to find.

Originally Posted by DavisDad

1. How the Modern Robotics Inc. (MRI) components control information between the ZTE type phone and the robot's functions.

There is a MicroUSB to MiniUSB cable that connects the phone to the "Core Power Distribution Module." That module apparently acts as a PowerPole splitter and as a USB hub. It gives You access to 7 USB ports that can take the various MRI modules.

These modules connect with a USB-A-Male to MiniUSB cable. At first I wondered why they went with the (almost obsolete) MiniUSB connectors, but it makes sense. It will prevent wrong signals being fed into phones, which stop working once they loose their smoke.

Example code is on their web site.

Originally Posted by DavisDad

1. For off the shelf sensors, what are the signal inputs? They look like 3-pin analog.

The "Core Device Interface Module" seems to support everything: 8 digital I/O, 8 analog in, 2 analog out, 2 PWM out, and an I2C bus with 6 drops run to pins. They do not state any reason why we can not use more than one of these if we wish.
http://modernroboticsinc.com/core-de...terface-module


Andrew

[Sasha]

Originally Posted by RecycledElectro

Example code is on their web site.

I didn't find it. Can you give a link?

[DavisDad]

Continued from post #34 (with edits)

Originally Posted by DavisDad

...

FTC 2015/2016 Calendar

• March 11, 2015- FIRST® Announces ‘Game-Changing’ Technology Platform for use in Worldwide Student Robotics Competitions
• March 11, 2015- FTC Tech Talk video blog by Ken Johnson
• May 1, 2015- Modern Robotics Inc. website goes live
• May 5, 2015- FTC registration opens
• May ?, 2015- "We are packaging a beta of the SDK for release. We plan to have it online within this month (May). "
• June 5, 2015- Hardware and Getting Started Available
  
• "Late June"- FTC kits ship
  
• Sept 1, 2015- App Inventor and Intro to Java Available

...

• September 12- FTC 2015/2016 Kickoff

My rest of the school year plan as mentor:

1. Figure out the Android controls and what components will be usable for 2016 season (e.g.: are only ZTE Speed phones allowed, or can we use a tablet for the driver interface)
2. Learn the App Inventor and Android Studio systems. Be able to help the team set up their programming environment (AI and/or Java).
3. When the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Android and Modern Robotics controls goes public this month (May), I hope to be able to figure out how all the components work together and move the programming environment set-up forward.
4. Since our team has limited financial resources, I want to figure out what is required to buy through FTC kits and what can be purchased more cheaply. I've already bought 2 used ZTE Speed phones on eBay, a USB hub & some USB-OTG cables for experimenting. I paid about $90 for the lot, and the FTC Kit costs $268.
5. Be prepared to understand and leverage the forum posts from programmers about Java Studio, App Inventor and the other computer stuff. Hopefully I'll have a test-bed programming environment assembled to allow testing the information supplied by folks knowledge about the implementation details. I know this will be difficult for our team as I'm the most knowledgeable person about programming, and I don't know much. I'm hoping if I can smooth the path by understanding enough to guide the students so they can do the semicolon coding.

I've gotten the phone to link with "Wi-Fi direct", gotten "Hello World" programs to work on a ZTE (both Android Studio & App Inventor). I'm now working on getting a game controller hooked up to the driver phone and send something to the robot phone; I'm thinking a button press on the Logitech would initiate the "Hello World" program on the robot phone.

[MattRain]

Originally Posted by DavisDad

Continued from post #34 (with edits)

• September 5 (guess)- FTC 2015/2016 Kickoff

My rest of the school year plan as mentor:

1. Since our team has limited financial resources, I want to figure out what is required to buy through FTC kits and what can be purchased more cheaply. I've already bought 2 used ZTE Speed phones on eBay, a USB hub & some USB-OTG cables for experimenting. I paid about $90 for the lot, and the FTC Kit costs $268.

I've gotten the phone to link with "Wi-Fi direct", gotten "Hello World" programs to work on a ZTE (both Android Studio & App Inventor). I'm now working on getting a game controller hooked up to the driver phone and send something to the robot phone; I'm thinking a button press on the Logitech would initiate the "Hello World" program on the robot phone.

Kickoff is September 12th.

When doing through the registration process, you HAVE to buy one of the "control" sets, lowest one is $10 and includes a cable, hub and binder. We bought our phones through Best buy for 40 a pop, at 4 phones (2 teams). So it looks like you will have to spend another 10 dollars.

I'm currently making multiple different ZTE Phone mounts that will connect to Tetrix and Actobotics easily that I will release to everyone that has a 3d printer.

[DavisDad]

There are a lot of posts posts being added to the FTC forum that help with the new controls. Below are links of searches on posts by people I've found helpful.

Tom Eng (FTC Engineer): http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/member.php?95868-Tom-Eng

Jonathan Berling (Qualcomm Engineer): http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/member.p...nathan-Berling

PlilBot (Coach 2818): http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/member.php?5560-Philbot

Cheer4FTC (Mentor): http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/member.php?91071-Cheer4FTC

[capnrmorgan]

Quick guide to setting up a ZTE Speed phone for FTC from GEARSInc.

Shows how to configure the phone, and install the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) driver on your PC.

[DavisDad]

Robert Van Hoose (Mentor): http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/showthre...ll=1#post13288

[DavisDad]

From Tom Eng here: http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/showthre...ll=1#post13747

Hi Folks,

We plan on releasing the apps and the SDK soon. You can configure the robot to have a null hardware configuration (no hardware modules attached) and if you have the SDK, even though you don't have the hardware yet, you can still write some basic op modes and test things like the telemetry function (you can send data back from the robot controller to the driver station) and learn how to select and run an op mode.

Tom

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by DavisDad

From Tom Eng here: http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/showthre...ll=1#post13747

Thanks for keeping this thread updated! Super helpful to those of us that forget to check the FTC Forums all of the time

[DavisDad]

Tom Eng at the FTC forum has posted an excellent video demonstrating the new controls at Youtube: Demo Video

[levydev]

Anyone with a ZTE Speed device? I'm trying to use mine as a Wifi-Only device but it continues to try to activate on the cell service. At least I think that is what is happening.

Getting interrupts dialogs like:
"Activate Device: Are you swapping this device for one you currently have on your account?"
and
"The network did not respond in time. The sim card has locked. Please powercylce the device"