Free ROBOTC for all 2008 FIRST Robotics Teams!

[Rich Wong]

FREE!?

That is better than cold pizza!

[blaxbb]

would this be legal to use as competition code?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Cool. Does anyone find screenshots? I can't find any on the support page.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/i...or-vex-robots/

[neutrino15]

Is there any advantage of using robotc over "real" c? (IE mplab?)
Other than sheer simplicity, i suppose..

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by neutrino15

Is there any advantage of using robotc over "real" c? (IE mplab?)
Other than sheer simplicity, i suppose..

Yes. Somehow, the guys at NREC have figured out how to update the code on the controller without doing a full download. As such, you can make small adjustments to your code and download them to the robot for testing in just a couple of seconds, much faster than the traditional IFI Loader method. We haven't started our software development yet, but when we do, we will be using ROBOTC for that reason alone.

[timville]

I posted a screenshot on our website... thanks for alerting me to this!
Screenshot

This shows:
- Green bar shows what bit of code in your program is currently being executed.
- Global Variables show you the current value of all variables in your programs (updated every 1ms)
- Devices shows your the state of every timer, sensor input, and motor, updated roughly every 100ms, but depends upon how big the window is.
- System Parameters (only available in "advanced mode... you can get there by going to window - menu level) shows you all of the current internal states of your OI and RC, such as battery levels, global times, firmware versions, and if you're in autonomous/disabled mode.
- Program debug allows your to start/stop your program from the computer, and allows you to perform debugging features such as stepping into, stepping out and stepping over code to figure out where errors are in your program.

[timville]

To answer the question to "Is this competition legal?"... directly from the rules:

<R67> The control system is provided to allow wireless control of the ROBOTS. The Operator Interface, Robot Controller, speed controllers, relay modules, radio modems, batteries, battery charger, AC adapter, and 9-pin cables shall not be tampered with, modified, or adjusted in any way (tampering includes drilling, cutting, machining, gluing, rewiring, etc.),
with the following exceptions:
* User programmable code in the Robot Controller may be customized.

So yes, it is competition legal, as ROBOTC's custom firmware overwrites the USER part of the firmware, but does not touch the master firmware, still allowing the FRC to be controlled by the IFI control system. :-D

[blaxbb]

Originally Posted by timville

So yes, it is competition legal, as ROBOTC's custom firmware overwrites the USER part of the firmware, but does not touch the master firmware, still allowing the FRC to be controlled by the IFI control system. :-D

sounds great thanks

[neutrino15]

Hello non-pc users. I just finished installing RobotC on Darwine under OSX Leopard and was pleasantly surprised to find absolutely NO bugs whatsoever! I have not tried loading code yet onto the RC, but at least the program itself works. My friend also tried this on his linux box under WINE and he said it ran fine.
For those of you who dont know, DARWINE is a notoriously buggy version of WINE for OSX's Darwin kernel.. Yay workingness!!! (Ugly though!)