Hybrid Challenge-No Robot Left Behind

[Scott Carpman]

All NYC Teams should send a student to the programming clinic sessions on Saturday at LIC High School. Randy Schaeffer sent out an email about it, I'll try to dig it up from the ol' inbox.

EDIT:
Follow this link for info
http://nycnjfirst.org/training_programming.html

NRLB!

[taggartbg]

I, along with 3 other members of my team, got our IR board and code working today. We plan to soon make a YouTube video to explain our process and offer hints for other teams to do the same.

[Qbranch]

Hey... a note... I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's noticed that the IR remote reciever doesn't work at all if there's more than one remote in the general vicinity.

Is anyone else leaving the IR remote control as a last resort and going without?

Or has anyone figured out a way of making it function dependably?

For now, 1024 is improving it's SDAR (which was first debuted at our pit in Atlanta last year) or Sonar Direction and Ranging. Right now we have it to a point where we can take up to 3 simultaneous datastreams with a little over 1 update/sec, scan range 7', angle accuracy +/-2deg at Fast scan speed. Up to 9' range with +/-0.35deg accuracy.

We're going for a PID-based electronically geared path following routine with SDAR-based obstacle avoidance.

Okay, so i digressed a little. Videos to be posted (hopefully) in a couple weeks.

-q

[Travis Hoffman]

Please see this thread for free and easy software tools that facilitate connections and partnerships between teams over distances via the Internet.

Using these tools in tandem lets any veteran team reach out and provide programming or any other kind of educational assistance to rookie and inexperienced teams without ever leaving the comfort of their shops.

Realtime voice/videoconferencing combined with a powerful remote desktop/file transfer application - I invite you to check these tools out and see what kinds of creative applications you can discover.

Even if you're two veteran teams from the same region who aren't collaborating on a design, using these tools allows you to more easily ping ideas and prototypes off of mentors and students from other local teams - if people can get past the us vs. them competitive mentality and learn to spend more time "talking shop" with other local teams in person and via this software, I believe all the individual robotics programs involved would stand to benefit a great deal.

[Doug Leppard]

1902 team accepts the challenge and will support teams to have a simple hybrid mode.

PLEASE BUILD INTO THE HYBRID MODE TIME DELAYS.

One of my fears this year is not my opinents knocking me out but crashing into my partners coming out of the gate. We have built in switches that allow 0 0.5 1 and 2 second delays so we can give others time to get out of the way.

You don't need switches but you can have jumpers on the robot controller to change the delay time in the software.

[lkdjm]

As the senior programmer on Longwood's Digital Impact Team 564, I accept the challenge. Gracious professionalism is more important than competition.
One of our main goals at competition this year will be to help teams with their code, as so many helped me when I was learning.

[lukevanoort]

A goal of mine this year is to gradually make myself redundant, since I am graduating. So, hopefully I will succeed at that and thus have some time at the competitions to go out and help others with their programming. Actually, assuming they all make it to competition and all learn C (some are just starting), we should have six programmers available to help other teams on their hybrid modes.

If anyone is at the VCU regional (or the championship, but since we don't know divisions yet, it is kind of hard to make that offer) and lacks a hybrid mode (or is having any other robot-related issues) come on by the team 587 pit and ask for "Luke." If nobody in the pit is wearing a blue shirt embroidered with the FIRST logo (ie judges) I'll happily come by and help out. A word of warning: I don't know how to use EasyC and neither do most of our other coders, so if your robot code is in EasyC, we probably won't be very helpful.

[TheNotoriousKid]

Well, if it hasn't already been shown evident..."Team 25 Graciously Accepts"...the challenge.

[Jim E]

M.A.R.S. Team 1523 Graciously accepts.

I guess will have to nudge our programmer to write some generic short autonomous code to get them across the Finish line if they cannot do it themselves.

[ShotgunNinja]

Well, my team has shown that they wanted to go with the IR sensor controller, maybe using a TV/VCR remote. But I am in charge of the programming, and I was wondering...

Would something like this (Using ROBOTC) be usable?

task Autonomous()  { // Note: Just pseudocode, but whatever
while (bIfiAutonomousMode) /* Just in case... */
{
   switch(GetIRInputState()) /* Get the state of the IR sensor, in a different subroutine */
   {
      case Button1:
         Action1; // Something like "Move forward, stop"...
      case Button2:
         Action2; // Maybe "Turn Left"
      case Button3:
         Action3; // Maybe "Turn Right"
      case Button4:
         Action4; /* Something along the lines of: "Grab ball off overpass, however possible" */
      default:
         TakeNoAction; // Just "Stop Motors" or something
   }
   BetweenActions; // Something like "Stop Motors, Wait XX MS"
}
EndingAction; /* Play a sound or something. Reset motors for Human Control. Etc. */
}

Any comments?

[timville]

The problem with the code above is that the IR sensor does not remain as a "1" state when you hold the button. I believe the IR sensor will pulse the circut open and close every 100ms.

See my reply to your other thread with sample code on how to use the IR sensor with ROBOTC. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=63004

[GGCO]

Hmm. The 5 second delay wastes a lot of time. My team wants to get the ball down, along with going around the track at least half-way.

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by timville

The problem with the code above is that the IR sensor does not remain as a "1" state when you hold the button. I believe the IR sensor will pulse the circut open and close every 100ms.

See my reply to your other thread with sample code on how to use the IR sensor with ROBOTC. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=63004

yes.
what you need to do looks more like this:

If (RC_dig_in04)
     c=0;
If (RC_dig_in01)
     c=1;
If (RC_dig_in02)
     c=2;
If (RC_dig_in03)
     c=3;
if (c==1)
   pwm01=254;
if (c==2)
   Pwm02=0;
if (c==3)
   Pwm05=160;

Originally Posted by ShotgunNinja

Well, my team has shown that they wanted to go with the IR sensor controller, maybe using a TV/VCR remote. But I am in charge of the programming, and I was wondering...

Would something like this (Using ROBOTC) be usable?

task Autonomous()  { // Note: Just pseudocode, but whatever
while (bIfiAutonomousMode) /* Just in case... */
{
   switch(GetIRInputState()) /* Get the state of the IR sensor, in a different subroutine */
   {
      case Button1:
         Action1; // Something like "Move forward, stop"...
      case Button2:
         Action2; // Maybe "Turn Left"
      case Button3:
         Action3; // Maybe "Turn Right"
      case Button4:
         Action4; /* Something along the lines of: "Grab ball off overpass, however possible" */
      default:
         TakeNoAction; // Just "Stop Motors" or something
   }
   BetweenActions; // Something like "Stop Motors, Wait XX MS"
}
EndingAction; /* Play a sound or something. Reset motors for Human Control. Etc. */
}

Any comments?

You should look into using pointers to functions...it makes what your trying to do real simple...When you press a button, change the pointer to a function to the new behavior function..In your autonomous_routine just call the pointer as if it were the function. I

first decalre a couple of simple functions like: (fill in the code)
void drive_fwd(void);
void drive_bwd(void);
void turn_left(void);
void turn_right(void);

then declare a function pointer:
void (*auto_function)(void); the splat in the parens make a function pointer.
Note the format of the prototype and the fucntion pointer is the same, for the pointer replace the function name with the (*pointer_name)

Now use your code to read the IR board
but the action would assign a fucntion to the pointer.
switch(GetIRInputState()) /* Get the state of the IR sensor, in a different subroutine */
{
case Button1:
auto_function = drive_fwd;; // Something like "Move forward, stop"...
case Button2:
auto_function = drive_bwd;; // Maybe "backwards"
case Button3:
auto_function = turn_left; // Maybe "Turn left"
case Button4:
auto_fucntion = turn_right; /* Something along the lines of: "Grab ball off overpass, however possible" */
default:
TakeNoAction; // Just "Stop Motors" or something
}

then by calling auto_function just as if it were a function it will perform the function you assigned to it.

auto_function(); // do what it assigned to the pointer. call this in the autonomous loop.

The function pointer will stay the same until you change it with the IR board.


BC

[tseres]

if anyone is at the Waterloo and Greater Toronto Regional, come ask for me at the 1565 pit. i have code available that can help ANY team have a near-perfect autonomous. and no, i'm not bluffing

any questions please PM me and/or i'll see you in the pits!!!