FIRST 2008 Robot Emulator

[ham90mack]

Rob Bayer's robot emulator has quirked my interest... Therefore, I am currently planning to make a robot emulator for post-2005 code! It will be written in Java, so when all is done, hopefully it will run in both Windows and Linux (as long as the code is compiled to .dll or .so on the appropriate OS). Just like Rob Bayer's emulator, I hope to minimize the amount of code to change within the original robot code so it can be compiled with and without the "code hack" files with no modifications necessary.

I have no clue if this emulator will work with EasyC or not since my team uses MPLab. I am absolutely certain that it will not be able to parse .ecp files. So it will not work with EasyC unless somebody figures out how to make EasyC export files to .c and .h so it can be compiled elsewhere and make it work in the end.

I don't expect this program to be finished in a few months, however. I hope to be done before the robot build or at least within a few weeks of the kickoff. I am planning to make the GUI first and then implement the actual emulating background. I should be able to release a GUI only version within the next month.

Hopefully, most of the "hack code" Rob Bayer made will work with the post-2005 controller code. I know it doesn't work at the moment without modifications due to the new serial port for the camera. It would be nice to know what kind of implementation I need to fake the serial port feedback and what else changed with the post-2005 controller.

A few special features that might be in the final program (if I figure out how to do them all): extensive documentation for adaptability (such as an extra method put in the main that is not in the default code), special variable watch window, and camera emulator. But the main emulation will be finished before these features are added.

I will consider other special features if suggested, but I doubt I will have the time for anything too extensive. Besides, this program will be obsoleted next year anyway when the controller system is changed, so my main focus will be to make it work with this year's code the way Rob's did with 2004 code.