Using LabView to Simulate the Robot without the DAQ

[Danny Diaz]

Originally Posted by JillianM

The VIs provided seem to be dependant on the DAQ and dashboard. Am I wrong about this? The description talks about hardware-in-the-loop testing. If I don't have the hardware (since another part of our team is using it), then I need another way to test the software. One of the NI spokesmen in Atlanta said I should be able to do this, but he didn't know how. Has anyone ever tried?

I'm the one who initially designed the LabVIEW simulation toolkit for the IFI system, so maybe I can be of some help here.

The whole business with needing the DAQ and the Dashboard and all the bells and whistles that came with it was because we didn't have any kind of access to the software running on the PIC on the IFI system. We were forced to treat the IFI system as a "black box," with the exception of having the dashboard for SOME semblance of being able to peek at what was going on in there. We couldn't "fake" data being used on the IFI controller via any natural mechanism, so I was forced to use the USB-DAQ device to generate the "fake" data with LabVIEW to provide to the IFI system. That way we could test code running on the IFI system and provide the necessary "stimulus" that the software/hardware expected, and then we used the Dashboard to give us an idea about what the "result" of the "stimulus" was.

Using the cRIO with LabVIEW (or the C/C++ interface for that matter) is going to be much simpler since we actually have access to the code on the cRIO device. We have the ability to throw breakpoints on the code. We have the ability to single-step through code. And, if you want to, you can easily rig up a simulation "platform" for your code and run your FRC code on your laptop - as long as you provide the necessary inputs/data via front-panel objects (dials, sliders, numeric inputs, boolean buttons, etc...). We're working with top institutions to provide the best tutorials and documentation we can for this system, targeted to this audience. I think you'll be pleased.

-Danny