[FTC]: LabVIEW Programming Template for FTC

[Team 288]

Originally Posted by PhilBot

instead of inverting the drive signal to one motor, you can set the "Invert" input to "true" for that wheel.

Done. Thanks for the suggestion, we hadn't noticed the 'invert' input.

Originally Posted by PhilBot

Sorry team 288, but your Dead-Zone scaling is a major CPU hog, and on my NXT it introduces a very noticable delay. I suspect that it's the floating point divide and two floating point multiplies. Without a floating point processor, divides can take a long time.

We're sorry to hear that you experienced this with our code. In all of our (admittedly very unscientific) tests, the robot seems to respond to its controls instantly. In an effort to improve speed, we have re-done the scaling so that it now uses only one integer division, and never deals with floating point numbers. This should be faster, but we are honestly unable to notice any difference.

We would appreciate it if you could try out the improved scaling code and see if our changes have any impact.

On another note, we have noticed that many computers have trouble displaying the formula embedded in the scaling paper, so we exported it to a PDF.

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by Team 288

In all of our (admittedly very unscientific) tests, the robot seems to respond to its controls instantly.

Really! That's odd, because it's very noticable on my NXT's.

I'm wonderng what the possible differences might be. We both should be using the same NXT firmware. Did you download the recent FTC Toolkit update (released on Oct 16th)? I did, so I wonder if this could make a difference.

I just installed your code right as it came, and got the delayed response. There is no doubt it's there.

I wonder if the NXT internals have changed recently. When I get a chance I'm going to look at the internal Settings/NXT version info. in the brick to see how it compares with yours. Can you lookup and post that info when you get a chance?

I'll try the new code when I get a moment.

[jbbjjbt]

Originally Posted by PhilBot

Really! That's odd, because it's very noticable on my NXT's.

I'm wonderng what the possible differences might be. We both should be using the same NXT firmware. Did you download the recent FTC Toolkit update (released on Oct 16th)? I did, so I wonder if this could make a difference.

Philbot,
Do you have encoders on your drive motors and are they hooked up? We don't and the new move motors vi definitely has delays if you don't have encoders.

[Team 288]

Originally Posted by PhilBot

I'm wonderng what the possible differences might be. We both should be using the same NXT firmware. Did you download the recent FTC Toolkit update (released on Oct 16th)? I did, so I wonder if this could make a difference.

We had not installed that update, so we put it on one computer as a test. We did not notice any lag in the NXT's performance.

Originally Posted by PhilBot

I wonder if the NXT internals have changed recently. When I get a chance I'm going to look at the internal Settings/NXT version info. in the brick to see how it compares with yours. Can you lookup and post that info when you get a chance?

We checked it, and got:

FW:   1.21
AVR:  1.01
BC4:  1.01
BUILD 0508081346
ID    0016530857F2

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by Team 288

FW:   1.21
AVR:  1.01
BC4:  1.01
BUILD 0508081346
ID    0016530857F2

I have the same...

but it looks like there may be a fix in the works.... Woo Hoo !

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by jbbjjbt

Philbot,
Do you have encoders on your drive motors and are they hooked up? We don't and the new move motors vi definitely has delays if you don't have encoders.

Well, I do sometimes.... We're trying a few drive combinations and only have the encoders on one set of motors.

I looked at the code and although there does seem to be a call to "GetEncoders" the call just seems to be setting some flags. No sure why it's there. The Move command is just a fixed power command as far as I can tell... not sure why there should be any extra delays... but I'll take your word for it... I gues I better test it both ways to see if I get simmilar results.

Too bad if I want to drive the motors without encoders....

Phil.