Labview Simulator

[Bpk9p4]

Has anyone used the labview robot simulator. I have played around with it some and it seems like it would be a good way to teach students labview. Has anyone had success with this. Also can you run it off the arrow keys or do you need to use a joystick

[null]

I've tried it out, though it was very laggy for me (my computer has a good graphics card, 8GB of RAM, and an i3.) I couldn't really examine it, but it was pretty laggy and unresponsive for me.

[Greg McKaskle]

You may have better luck if you turn off the dashboard vision display -- you'll still have the visualization in the simulation app. There was a LV patch last year that improved the fake camera performance and lowered CPU usage by a huge amount. You may want to make sure you have version 5.1 -- I think that was the version number.

Also, you can use two computers, one that is DS and DB and one that is the cRIO and robot, and that may perform better for you.

Greg McKaskle

[null]

Thank you for that information. If I get around to it, I'll see if the software needs an update as well as running the simulator to take a more thorough examination of it. I'll definitely try out the two-computer setup, though.

[Doug Norman]

Originally Posted by Bpk9p4

Also can you run it off the arrow keys or do you need to use a joystick

Technically, you could run it off arrow keys, but you'd have to implement that code just like you could for a regular robot. You are likely better off to use a joystick (or similar). Even if you implemented arrow keys, they may not work very well for driving a robot.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Bpk9p4

Also can you run it off the arrow keys or do you need to use a joystick

The idea is to control the simulated robot the same way you would control a physical one. You use the normal Driver Station program to connect to it. The Driver Station does not give you a way to use keyboard commands for robot control. You could implement your own communication scheme with a custom Dashboard program in order to use arrow keys if you really needed to.

[Bpk9p4]

Thanks for the advice. I tried it last night with a joystick and it worked ok. i am thinking about using this to teach the students how to develop robotic code. Any suggestions on fun training exercises that we could turn into a game?

[Greg McKaskle]

If you want it to focus on driving, then you could do laps through the tunnel or pushing the ball in a prescribed path.

If you want to focus on programming, have them use sensors to navigate about the field in order to visit key locations, stop closest to a mark, get there the fastest, etc.

Greg McKaskle

[MrRiedemanJACC]

Is there an FTC simulator for Labview out there? We (team 2611) are starting and attempting to help with multiple middle school FTC teams. There is only one robot per each of the teams and if we had a simulation software it would help greatly with each of the students being able to take the work home and test out what they have done.

[Greg McKaskle]

At this point, the simulator is only integrated into the FRC libraries. If you have additional NXTs, even if they use LEGO motors, many of the aspects will be the same and useful for learning.

Greg McKaskle