Help, I'm a world class computer programming genius yet I'm totally lost.

[Doug Leppard]

John and Alex,

I cut my teeth on the same things as you did. So I know where you are coming from.

As a team we use EasyC Pro. Some will say you must use MPLAB as our team has done years before. But last year we did EasyC Pro and it takes the pain out of programming and provides what you need. Has an environment that allows kids to program. We programmed the VEX machines to work out the problems and then moved the code and concepts to the big robots.

Our team did well last year, voted in CD having best autonomous mode and made it to Einstein (if you are new that means we went to the Atlanta Championships and were one of the final 12 robots in the competition). I only say that because some look down on EasyC Pro but it lets us proto type quickly and we got results. It has a lot of built in stuff, like encoders etc and other routines that you don’t have to worry about doing and just do the core that you need to do for your team.

I would definitely look into it.

[pafwl]

I have been doing this for 11 years now. I have given seminars on programming. You do not need to go to great detail for this. When you have time read Kevin's stuff at your lesure but for now you can put it to good use. I have several presentations you can use and as you have a background in C most of the gooey details should be pretty easy to master. You can get these at www.frc272.com.Ideas.

Good luck

[pafwl]

Sorry for messing up the URL in my last post. The presentations are at www.frc272.com/Ideas (Capital I in Ideas)


Sorry, fat fingers...

[pafwl]

PWM
Pulse Width Modulated output.(byte) Range 0-255, mid range =127. Joystick output. This applies to Speed controller via a control cable (White, red, black). This tells Speed controller how much voltage and polarity. (forward or reverse). You assign joystick value to pwm output.

pwm01 = p3_y; // left driver joystick



Relay
Separate module connected via control cable to Spike Relay controller.
Has two variables _fwd _rev. When controlling motor it will apply full power in foward or reverse.
relay1_fwd = 1;
relay1_rev = 0;

To turn it all off ...
relay1_fwd = 0;
relay1_rev = 0;


Once you compile your code you must download it to micro. Go ti IFI for loader and instructions. Ther eis a default code base that helps get you started.

[ebarker]

very short winded answer.

open default project;
learn user_routines.c - used for default tele operation
learn user_routines_fast.c - used for hybrid/auton operation

download several kevin.org projects, like adc and encoder
carefully READ the readme.txt in these projects. they are precise and step by step.

use something like WINDIFF and examine the differences between the kevin projects and the default project. There you will see how he incrementally added features to the default project.

I use TREECOMP and WINDIFF to do deltas on the projects. There are other tools that do the same.

This is about the fastest quickstart I can think of for an experienced programmer. I would do all of that before jumping into processor datasheets and stuff. There is a LOT of framework that is already done. All you have to do is add your algorithms and go.

[ShotgunNinja]

Originally Posted by jratcliff

...I have written a couple of best selling computer games for Electronic Arts, shipped games on numerous platforms and microprocessors, and more recently was the lead engine programmer for the massively multi player online game 'Planetside' for Sony Online Entertainment...

Sorry for getting off-topic for a sec, but A PROFESSIONAL GAME PROGRAMMER, OH MY GOD. That is my LIFELONG DREAM.

You said you've worked for Electronic Arts? What's it like, as a game programmer? I've done some fiddling around with the Source Engine code, and I am trying to get a game project off the ground. Any tips? Things to watch out for? Reasons why Wisconsin is not a good place for game programmers?

[bcharbonneau]

We (Team 1296) are having problems as well. But only on one of our computers. It's giving us an error involving a .cof file but seems to be creating the .hex file anyway. We not far enough along to determine if the .hex file is any good. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks,

C

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by bcharbonneau

...It's giving us an error involving a .cof file...

We'd be able to give you better help if you quoted the actual error. But my guess is that you're running into a known issue involving long path names. The part of the link process which creates the .cof file doesn't deal well with the long name that comes from deeply nested folders. The usual advice to fix the problem is to put your program directory somewhere close to the root, like C:\ROBOT.

Or you can just ignore the error, because you don't actually need the .cof file in order to load the program into your robot.