Programming with the 2009 controller

[Phalanx]

Originally Posted by Danny Diaz

You mean the FRC Simulation and Modeling Toolkit VIs we provided for the IFI controller? Nope. That toolkit was designed specifically for the IFI controller since we couldn't do the kinds of things we can do with the cRIO. Unfortunately we had to look at the IFI controller like a black box, and use the USB DAQ device to programmatically inject "fake" sensor data to make the controller think its sensors and such were actually giving it live data, and then we used the Dashboard to peek at what was going on behind the scenes to see what the results were. With this mechanism the modeling environment was extremely specific, and you were limited as to what you could do (forget modeling the camera inputs!!).

I'm of the opinion that while the new control system will be significantly different than the IFI control system, that the FRC Modeling Toolkit could still be a useful learning tool for those of us that need skill sets using Labview. I believe that by using it, it will help bring some better understanding in how to use Labview by working with environment, motors, and sensors we are already familiar with. Since we "know" how those systems are supposed to work, we could use it as a learning/teaching tool. Does this make sense? Or would there be a better approach?