[FTC]: Reading the 12V Battery voltage in LabVIEW

[PhilBot]

Hi

I got sick of forgetting to turn on our 12V battery (for FTC) and since we can't add any sort of power indicator there's no "easy" way to allert the driver before the match starts.

Well, it turns out that the HiTechnic Motor Controller does actually measure the battery voltage and makes it available as a register.

I wrote a LabVIEW VI to read this register and convert it to milli-volts.

The cool thing is that if the battery voltage is actually OFF, then the VI returns an error. So you can detect low voltage and no-voltage.

I've written a White Paper and attached the VI along with a sample beeper program.

It's here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2189

If you use it in your "disable"loop it will allert you of a problem while setting up on the field.