Autonomous Program Switch

[Big Kid]

Last year, I was able to do this with ours with a few switches connected to the I/O of the Digi. Sidecar. It was somewhat simple, just setting up the programming for it was long. Besides that is works like a charm I think we had 8 possible auto. we only used 4 or 6 max.

[PhilBot]

Originally Posted by Big Kid

Last year, I was able to do this with ours with a few switches connected to the I/O of the Digi. Sidecar. It was somewhat simple, just setting up the programming for it was long. Besides that is works like a charm I think we had 8 possible auto. we only used 4 or 6 max.

It's actually much more convinient to do it in software.

We used one of the Joystick buttons to step through auto mode options.
They only worked when the robot was disabled in auto mode.
It saved the auto mode number in a file on the cRIO, so it remembered it next time it powerd up.

It also displayed the name of the program on the LCD display, so it will still work with the new DS's.

The beauty of this method is that if you forget to set the mode when you position the robot, you can still change it up until the time you have to step away from the driver station.

I wrote a white paper last year....

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2209

[Big Kid]

my thing with it was that we didn't know you could program the DS at the time, I didn't until comp. so it ended up being hardwired. Not to mention could you program the DS with LabVIEW? But besides the point that is. Still Auto. switches are possible

[Greg McKaskle]

In addition to all of the approaches already listed, the new DS also supports virtual I/O. If you are running the DS without an I/O board attached, the Compatible/Simple I/O page actually lets you set the values of the analog and digitals using the mouse. The values are saved with the DS until you change them again or connect the I/O HW, and they are latched during auto-enabled. Hopefully this means you can have inputs to the autonomous without necessarily needing a soldering iron.

Be sure to update the DS SW before playing with this too much as it changed between the laptop version and the update version.

Greg McKaskle

[jsasaki]

In 09 we had 2 SPST submini slide switches wired to the DSC with 2 PWM's and had 4 different autonomous programs (2 up, 2 down, left up right down, right up left down) accordingly to where we were placed in the field. So its very possible

See you in Arizona
Good luck teams!

[Dennis Erickson]

If you want a very simple solution you can use the USER1 switch on the cRIO. Using the "FRC ReadSwitch.vi" will return its position. This is a very small switch and you should be carefull when using it. Do not move the other switches in the area.

[Heath]

Last year, our team made a box with three switches that we connected to the digital IO sidecar that gave us more possible autonomous modes than we actually used. However, we discovered a little to late that there was actually a pre-made block to determine your starting position in the WPI robotics library. It may still be applicable this year.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Heath

...there was actually a pre-made block to determine your starting position in the WPI robotics library.

It only tells you which spot in the alliance station your controls are assigned to. It doesn't have anything to do with where on the field your robot starts.