Thoughts on the new Control System by a Beta Tester

[dbeck103]

103 has been working with the new control system for the past 5 weeks and I thought I would post my thoughts on the new system. I am not a programmer and understand enough to get by. I know what we have to do but leave it to the programmers to make the magic happen. My initial thoughts on the controls was that in Jan. this was going to be a disaster, however I believe that having the beta testing occur it will help alleviate the pain. WE have had a lot of success working with this new system, the only problems have been in upgrading the firmware and using laptops. I believe that most of those problems are now non issues. We are using labview and the 2 mentors that we have working on the beta system are well versed in Labview and have been able to put the controls and program them into last years bot. Labview, utilized in the Crios, in my opinion provides a lot more flexibility for this years Robot design. We have not been able to work with C++ yet but from what I hear that should work as well. In our opinion Labview is the way to go. Gone is the use of Easy C and that will cause problems in Jan when teams go to program their bots and do not have anyone who can program in labview or C++. There will be default programs that will help but not knowing those programs will create havoc. We are continuing the testing for the next two weeks and will be at Brunswick Eruption on Nov 1 and Ramp Riot on Nov 8. We are hoping to webcast our seminar at Ramp Riot.

[Jon236]

Thank you for the update. I am sure it will help relieve a lot of anxiety amongst the teams about the new control system.

Hopefully, 2010 will see EasyC back in the picture. I know a lot of teams that are rookies or don't have access to programming assets have depended on EasyC in the past.

[Leav]

I don't know if it's only my eeePC screen, but that was hard to read

Thanks for your thoughts though, I think it's great to have feedback from people other than the programmers.

You make a good point here. teams: Start learning Labview or C! don't wait until january, or even if teams will be getting the controller before the kickoff!

I already had several situations where I was waiting for some part to arrive in order to start working, aand when it finally arrived I had to do lots of work that had nothing to do with that part before I could even touch it - work that could have been done while I was waiting!

-Leav

[Bob Steele]

Leav,

You give terrific advice on this... and not just for LabView/programming

No one should make the mistake of thinking that they have to wait until they have a part in hand to start working or even worse... the whole kit...

We cannot design directly for the competition but we can be exploring alternatives, gathering resources.. thinking about things like travel and button designs... and how to control the robot...

Time during November and January can be well spent doing preliminary work for the team. This is all time that won't have to be spent during the build season.

Great comment

R

[Bomberofdoom]

Taking the words from Will Smith:

"GET TO WORK!! (Science let's you be in home with your kids)"