Controlling Autonomous GamePlan

[jmanela]

I know there are alot of methods to choose which autonomous you want to run before a match, can you please give some examples?

Thanks,

[RoboMaster]

I think this depends whether or not you have time to do a quick switch in your programming and re-download the code before a match, or you have to quickly switch tactics right away and it would be better to flip a physical switch. Which one are you talking about?

If you're talking about the first, here's how I would do it:
Make a case structure and put the code for the different strategies of autonomous in the different cases. Wire up a constant or a dashboard control to the case structure to decide which strategy you want to use. Then before you download your preferred code, switch this constant or control to the case that you want.

If you want something more immediate, there's a whole bunch of different ways for taking the value of a physical switch and using that to determine which case to do. Basically you read from that switch and change the case structure I was talking about depending on its value.

Here's some ideas:

-Throttle on the joysticks:
On the new 2009 joysticks there is a throttle that can be used like a switch if you aren't using it already. This is handy because you don't have to wire anything else extra up to the robot. It is the up-down dial that's front and center. You can read it's value in the code and see if it's greater than or less than 0.5/the middle. This effectively means if it's up or down. Before the match, you can switch this throttle to the desired position.

-Switch on the robot
Go to Radio Shack, buy a switch. Mount said switch on robot. Wire said switch to the digital sidecar. Switch said switch before match. Test said switch in code and switch the case structure depending on its value

-Switch on driver station
Pretty much the same as above, but hook it up to a driver station digital input. Actually, I don't know if this will work because the driver station might not be able to send data to the robot during autonomous during an official match.

Keep in mind it might be nice to put the different code in individual subVIs so that it's cleaner and the case structure isn't huge.
Hope that helps! Please ask if you need something more specific concerning one of these options!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by RoboMaster

-Switch on driver station
Pretty much the same as above, but hook it up to a driver station digital input. Actually, I don't know if this will work because the driver station might not be able to send data to the robot during autonomous during an official match.

1714 did it this way for our first two events. The robot reads the switch data before the match begins if I understand correctly so it's not communicating with the DS during auto (much like the joystick solution you posted above). I didn't code it so I can't tell you any more than that.
-Chris

[nathanww]

The competition sequence goes:
watchdog override->disabled->autonomous->disabled(?)->teleop->disabled

The robot has no problems doing IO to the DS when it's in disabled mode, which is what you see when teams are loading and the field is being set up. Our biggest challenge with using this time period was that that period can be a little hectic for the drivers, since they have to do robot loading, last-minute tactics, and the pre-match checklist.

[Greg McKaskle]

Last year, the DS allowed switch settings through until the mode was enabled. This meant that the right way to use it was to latch the data during disable, and ignore what was sent in enable. I believe that this will now be done for you, and you can simply read the value and during enable, it will give the value from the last disable packet.

Greg McKaskle

[ezygmont708]

Attached is a PDF of what TEAM 708 used this year. It is a binary switch, allowing many autonomous modes to be pre-programmed into the robot and switched depending on competition variables i.e. starting position, game strategy.

The last slide is a list of items needed to put this "Switch Box"

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by nathanww

The competition sequence goes:
watchdog override->disabled->autonomous->disabled(?)->teleop->disabled

The first part of that apparently isn't always the case when using FMS-lite. We didn't spend any time trying to figure out exactly what was going on at CAGE, but our 2009 robot's autonomous didn't run consistently. Its autonomous selection defaults at bootup to "none", reads an analog input from the Driver Station a half second into disabled mode to set the desired routine, and uses that setting as soon as it gets enabled. It also allows the operator to step through the routines using a pair of joystick buttons at any time before autonomous mode is commanded. The currently selected mode is displayed on the bottom line of the DS display. Even though we only had one routine programmed, and the pot on the analog input was locked in place, we discovered that we sometimes had to use the alternate method to force the autonomous program to run at all.

There was enough field-control frustration that day for us to just shrug and do whatever worked.

[Tom Line]

We've used 3 methods.

In '07, we used the user-byte feature to display the autonomous mode in disabled, and indexed the number up or down using buttons hooked to i/o.

In '08, we used the remote control.

In '09, we used the two throttles on our tankdrive joysticks. One was distance, the other angle (fed back through the driver station LCD).

Right now, we've also prorammed a simple count-up / count-down on driver joystick button press so we can use the '07 method on the new control system with feedback through the 2010 driverstation user messages screen. It updates using the same LCD library the '09 one did.