pic: Touchscreen interface, theory of operation

[Jared Russell]

This discussion brings up an interesting rules question.

Presently, you can download code to a robot when it is on the field by plugging your laptop into the other Ethernet port. Doing a soft reboot would then complete the update. A few times this year we have done so to get in "last minute" code changes without having to tether up the bot in the queuing line.

However, if properly written, one could eliminate the need to reboot the robot altogether. Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Create your autonomous mode on the laptop.
2. The software then creates a text file representing the sequence of autonomous commands.
3. The laptop is connected to the driver station Ethernet port.
4. Using FTP, the text file is placed on the cRIO.
5. Upon the initialization of autonomous mode, the software parses the text file and acts upon the stored sequence of commands.

As long as all of these steps are complete by the time the robot is enabled, is there anything in 2009 (or past) rules that would preclude this scheme? As far as I am concerned, this solution is far easier than using an Arduino board and writing a custom communications protocol.

I think I have some coding to do.

(Even if the 2010 rules explicitly disallow transmission of packets from a laptop to the cRIO at any point when the robot is on the field, such a scheme would probably still be the easiest way to tweak autonomous modes without ever needing to rebuild or even reboot)

[Billfred]

I can't think of any 2009 rules that prohibits FTPing a file of commands over pre-match. 195 used a similar strategy in 2006 to let them create waypoints to make them more effective in defending against opponents in autonomous (theirs, as I remember, used a PDA connected to the serial port to dump the data before the match).

I'll ask a silly question: What if you want to run your manipulator (including specifying a particular position) during your autonomous routine?

[biojae]

Originally Posted by Billfred

I'll ask a silly question: What if you want to run your manipulator (including specifying a particular position) during your autonomous routine?

this is a general implemetation, based off of our 2009 lunacy robot. there are no manipulators that need to be run in auto. if our 2010 robot has a manipulator then the code will have to adapt.
the screen can display anything that we want it to, so we could have it display various options on the screen.

[biojae]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Presently, you can download code to a robot when it is on the field by plugging your laptop into the other Ethernet port.

yes, but our drivers didn't want a laptop up at the Driver station stand, they wanted some thing small, that could update the auto mode on the fly without dealing with uploading things to the robot.


the touch screen is only about 2.7'' by 2.1''
for comparison our laptop is 24" by 18"

[Elgin Clock]

Wasn't the concept of this introduced in Atlanta during the Championship Event on the big screen in 2008 when the cRIO was first officially & publicly announced?
What ever happened to that?
As a person with a CAD background, it seemed really cool to just draw a path & have a robot follow that.
Never saw anyone use anything like that this year though.
So disappointing.
Hopefully in the future more people will attempt this & succeed.

[biojae]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Wasn't the concept of this introduced in Atlanta during the Championship Event on the big screen in 2008 when the cRIO was first officially & publicly announced?
What ever happened to that?
As a person with a CAD background, it seemed really cool to just draw a path & have a robot follow that.
Never saw anyone use anything like that this year though.
So disappointing.
Hopefully in the future more people will attempt this & succeed.

I dont know, i never saw that video, or pictures of it.

that is basically what i am trying to accomplish, my team at the LA regional didnt like how the robot kept crashing into the driver station wall, and they wanted to have something to be able to change the behavior of the bot without having to tweak values in the code (no text file for us ).
one of them remembered the screen at atlanta, and wanted it put on the robot for last second strategy changes.
(we used binary switches but they couldnt ever remember what each switch did, or if it even worked)

[biojae]

This is similar to what it is going to look like

[Akash Rastogi]

Did you model this yourself or did you find it somewhere?

[biojae]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Did you model this yourself or did you find it somewhere?

The touch screen is from liquidware.
http://www.liquidware.com/shop/show/...chShield+Slide

but the interface to the driver station i developed.

the blue board under the screen is an arduino

there will be another board between the two components that will have the circuitry that i designed

[biojae]

Today, the touchscreen finally arrived

The circuit is almost completely soldered, and the screen can be powered off of one IO pin on the DS

Pictures soon, waiting for a photo box

*Heads off to go programming *