Gyro Chip: How To Use

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Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 3/4/99 2:52 PM MST



This is actually Ben Hebert, programmer for the Gunn
Robotics Team( #192), and I'm using the team co-captain's
username.

Following the national competition, I would be willing to
post something on how to use the gyro chip, since, from
what I've heard, there is some interest in such a document.
It would contain wiring and programming instructions, as well
as a general discussion on its application for FIRST.
If you would be interested in such a document, please
reply, because I'm more than willing to do this, if there
is sufficient interest.
Thanks,
Ben Hebert

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Posted by Joe Johnson, Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 3/4/99 8:42 PM MST


In Reply to: Gyro Chip: How To Use posted by Daniel on 3/4/99 2:52 PM MST:



Ben,

I know from last year how great your engineering skills are. From the description of your machine and the control scheme you have developed, I am sure that last year was no fluke.

Hats off to your entire team.

As to the "how to paper," Please write it. Do a bang up job with photos, schematics, the works. I am sure that there will be tons of interest. If you will let us, I would love to post such a paper in our "White Papers" section. (Our goal is to make that section of our site as popular as this wwwboard is -- eventually, it should be a good source of good information for all of us).


To all recruiters: Hire these students! I am very impressed. You should be too.


Joe J.

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Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 3/5/99 1:34 PM MST


In Reply to: Please tell all posted by Joe Johnson on 3/4/99 8:42 PM MST:



Joe--

You're thinking of the other Ben on GRT. I'm a sophomore and this is my first year.
I'll definately send it to you to post, but I'm need to know one thing before
I write it.

The first is how comfortable the audience would be with PBASIC. From
what I understand, many teams try to just edit the default program, because
they do not have anyone who is very comfortable with programming. On the
other hand, I'm sure many teams are like ours, and write their own programs
entirely.

Should I write it so that you could just copy and paste the example code
into the default program, or can I assume that people will write their own?

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Posted by Joe Johnson, Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 3/5/99 6:47 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: Please tell all posted by Daniel on 3/5/99 1:34 PM MST:



Ben,

I would assume basic PBASIC skills. But... explain anything extra tricky you do.

For instance, even though most folks know how to do calculations in PBASIC, many get hung up when it comes to dealing with negative numbers. If you use some elegant method to avoid some of the stranger aspects of unsigned 16 bit arithmatic, explain away.

By the way, does everyone understand at A = A MIN 0 will never change the value of A. This is a very important point with very important consequences (especially for feedback loops). As an example of the odd results you can get if you are not careful the statement A= (128 - error) MIN 0 will yield very odd results if error is ever greater than 128. In fact if error was 129 for example, A would be equal to 255. This would be a disaster if your feed back loop was expecting the motor to be driven in full reverse (i.e. 0) but it was in fact driven in full forward (i.e. 255).

Well, once again I have gone far afield.

Bottom line, Ben, I hope you right a paper that explains the tricks but leaves the obvious to the STAMP2 manual.

Joe J.