Free ROBOTC for all 2008 FIRST Robotics Teams!

[Brandon Martus]

Had this sent to us from ROBOTC to post .. passing it along:

ROBOTC for IFI-FRC is available for use in the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). ROBOTC for IFI-FRC is a C-based cross-platform programming language developed at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy for use on the IFI-FRC controller.

ROBOTC for IFI-FRC has a C-based source code editor, compiler, interactive debugger – a powerful programming language for high school roboticists. PWM controllers, spike/relays and a number of digital and analog sensors are also supported.

The ROBOTC team will be providing support, allong with sample code and training videos over the FRC 2008 season to help teams program their robots using ROBOTC for IFI-FRC. Make sure to check back to this site frequently for news and updates!

All FRC teams who are registered for the 2008 season are eligible to receive a free copy of ROBOTC for IFI-FRC. Visit http://www.robotc.net/ifi/frc for more details!

[Rich Wong]

FREE!?

That is better than cold pizza!

[blaxbb]

would this be legal to use as competition code?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Cool. Does anyone find screenshots? I can't find any on the support page.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/i...or-vex-robots/

[neutrino15]

Is there any advantage of using robotc over "real" c? (IE mplab?)
Other than sheer simplicity, i suppose..

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by neutrino15

Is there any advantage of using robotc over "real" c? (IE mplab?)
Other than sheer simplicity, i suppose..

Yes. Somehow, the guys at NREC have figured out how to update the code on the controller without doing a full download. As such, you can make small adjustments to your code and download them to the robot for testing in just a couple of seconds, much faster than the traditional IFI Loader method. We haven't started our software development yet, but when we do, we will be using ROBOTC for that reason alone.

[timville]

I posted a screenshot on our website... thanks for alerting me to this!
Screenshot

This shows:
- Green bar shows what bit of code in your program is currently being executed.
- Global Variables show you the current value of all variables in your programs (updated every 1ms)
- Devices shows your the state of every timer, sensor input, and motor, updated roughly every 100ms, but depends upon how big the window is.
- System Parameters (only available in "advanced mode... you can get there by going to window - menu level) shows you all of the current internal states of your OI and RC, such as battery levels, global times, firmware versions, and if you're in autonomous/disabled mode.
- Program debug allows your to start/stop your program from the computer, and allows you to perform debugging features such as stepping into, stepping out and stepping over code to figure out where errors are in your program.

[timville]

To answer the question to "Is this competition legal?"... directly from the rules:

<R67> The control system is provided to allow wireless control of the ROBOTS. The Operator Interface, Robot Controller, speed controllers, relay modules, radio modems, batteries, battery charger, AC adapter, and 9-pin cables shall not be tampered with, modified, or adjusted in any way (tampering includes drilling, cutting, machining, gluing, rewiring, etc.),
with the following exceptions:
* User programmable code in the Robot Controller may be customized.

So yes, it is competition legal, as ROBOTC's custom firmware overwrites the USER part of the firmware, but does not touch the master firmware, still allowing the FRC to be controlled by the IFI control system. :-D

[blaxbb]

Originally Posted by timville

So yes, it is competition legal, as ROBOTC's custom firmware overwrites the USER part of the firmware, but does not touch the master firmware, still allowing the FRC to be controlled by the IFI control system. :-D

sounds great thanks

[neutrino15]

Hello non-pc users. I just finished installing RobotC on Darwine under OSX Leopard and was pleasantly surprised to find absolutely NO bugs whatsoever! I have not tried loading code yet onto the RC, but at least the program itself works. My friend also tried this on his linux box under WINE and he said it ran fine.
For those of you who dont know, DARWINE is a notoriously buggy version of WINE for OSX's Darwin kernel.. Yay workingness!!! (Ugly though!)

[timville]

ROBOTC for IFI 1.14 Released - 1/30/08

Changelog for 1.13 to 1.14:
- Fixes Floating Point/Long Variables issues
- Adds support for the FRC 2008 Kit Encoders
- Adds support for the FRC 2008 Kit Accelerometer
- Adds support for the FRC 2008 Kit Yaw Rate Gyro
- Adds sample code for all sensors and IR board
- Adds support for using the Operator Interface LEDs
- Misc. Bug Fixes filed from users

http://robotc.net/ifi/frc/download.htm

To upgrade:
- Uninstall ROBOTC for IFI 1.13
- Install ROBOTC for IFI 1.14
- Update Firmware on the FRC to "FRC VM 0729.hex"

[GGCO]

How much different is ROBOTC from C? Would it help me to learn ROBOTC? I'm just curious. My team is doing alot of our programming in Eclipse.

[timville]

ROBOTC hides alot of the configuration code and takes care of sensor counters and calibration behind the scene... making it a much easier entry point into C programming.

I'd say try it out and let me know if you run into any issues. Check out some of the sample programs available at: http://robotc.net/ifi/frc/support.htm