Regarding The cRio

[davidthefat]

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/203964

I am assuming that is the cRio that we get... Is it legal to used a 2nd crio on your robot? Its a PowerPC based controller... Thats interesting isnt it? My mentor said that he was willing to buy another cRio for me to practice on, so why not use 2 on the robot?

[Robototes2412]

Umm, i dont know. i do have a quick question for you though. Are you prepared to have two robots to program for? They cannot have any communication with either eachother or the world, and there is only one gaming adapter. At most, i'd use an arduino, but a whole other cRIO, i wouldn't.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Robototes2412

Umm, i dont know. i do have a quick question for you though. Are you prepared to have two robots to program for? They cannot have any communication with either eachother or the world, and there is only one gaming adapter. At most, i'd use an arduino, but a whole other cRIO, i wouldn't.

My mentor thinks its most wise to work on the processor the final robot would have... I want to use 2 cRios on one robot because I think a ATmegaa284p won't have enough juice to run the image processing from multiple sensors very efficiently...

[MattD]

At minimum, I'd imagine this would violate <R22>. I'm not aware of any other rule that would specifically prohibit this, but I'm also not aware of any reason to use more than one cRIO on one robot.

[Al3+]

Hmmmm...

<R56> ROBOTS must be controlled via the programmable National Instruments cRIO-FRC (National Instruments part number 780406-01). Other controllers shall not be used.

Custom circuits and additional electronics are allowed to utilize the Port 2 Ethernet bus and/or the CAN-bus to communicate between devices. Note however, that the ROBOT must be controlled by the cRIO-FRC (see Rule <R56>). Thus, any additional devices on the Ethernet or CAN-bus must not provide command signals that do not originate from the cRIO-FRC It is our intent to incrementally open access to the full control system technologies in a controlled manner that reduces the risk of “unanticipated surprises” as we gain experience with the system.

That's what the competition manual says; I'm not sure how to interpret it or how you plan to use the other cRIO.

Edit: And also <R22> as mentioned above.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Al3+

Hmmmm...

<R56> ROBOTS must be controlled via the programmable National Instruments cRIO-FRC (National Instruments part number 780406-01). Other controllers shall not be used.

Custom circuits and additional electronics are allowed to utilize the Port 2 Ethernet bus and/or the CAN-bus to communicate between devices. Note however, that the ROBOT must be controlled by the cRIO-FRC (see Rule <R56>). Thus, any additional devices on the Ethernet or CAN-bus must not provide command signals that do not originate from the cRIO-FRC It is our intent to incrementally open access to the full control system technologies in a controlled manner that reduces the risk of “unanticipated surprises” as we gain experience with the system.

That's what the competition manual says; I'm not sure how to interpret it or how you plan to use the other cRIO.

I have a theory that you can use the port 2 ethernet port and connect the crio from the port one. Some one end of the enternet goes to the # 1 port then into the #2 port of the other and the camera goes on the 2nd post of #1

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by MattD

At minimum, I'd imagine this would violate <R22>. I'm not aware of any other rule that would specifically prohibit this, but I'm also not aware of any reason to use more than one cRIO on one robot.

But technically it is a KOP thing... Just multiple

[biojae]

As far as communications go, the second ethernet port on the cRio (one that communicates to FMS) can be used to talk to the second cRio.

<R68> All outputs from sensors, custom circuits and additional electronics shall connect to only
A. other custom circuits, or the following:
B. additional COTS electronics, or
C. input ports on the Digital Sidecar, or
D. input ports on the Analog Breakout, or
E. the RS-232 DB-9 serial port on the cRIO-FRC, or
F. the Ethernet bus connected to Port 2 of the cRIO-FRC,

Emphasis mine.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by biojae

As far as communications go, the second ethernet port on the cRio (one that communicates to FMS) can be used to talk to the second cRio.



Emphasis mine.

Its also probably possible to hook up another microcontroller as a Digital I/O

[MattD]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

But technically it is a KOP thing... Just multiple

The first cRIO would come from the KOP. The second would be a COTS COMPONENT.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/203964

I am assuming that is the cRio that we get... Is it legal to used a 2nd crio on your robot? Its a PowerPC based controller... Thats interesting isnt it? My mentor said that he was willing to buy another cRio for me to practice on, so why not use 2 on the robot?

Check the rules for custom electronics. If it meets all those rules you are ok.

BUT It is probably way too late to do this for 2010 and 2010 rules don't apply for 2011...

[biojae]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Its also probably possible to hook up another microcontroller as a Digital I/O

Which is correct, but if you have an ethernet port on your microcontroller (or 2nd cRio) why wouldn't you want to get 1 or more megabytes per second throughput?

Going through GPIO is going to be slower then ethernet.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Check the rules for custom electronics. If it meets all those rules you are ok.

BUT It is probably way too late to do this for 2010 and 2010 rules don't apply for 2011...

Dont the general rules stay the same year by year?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Dont the general rules stay the same year by year?

Nope, in general they are similar but they do change.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by biojae

Which is correct, but if you have an ethernet port on your microcontroller (or 2nd cRio) why wouldn't you want to get 1 or more megabytes per second throughput?

Going through GPIO is going to be slower then ethernet.

If I have an ethernet port on the microcontroller (not a 2nd cRio) where would the camera plug in if the 2nd port is used up? Not using it on the microcontroller, its too much for it