Alright so we can deploy the code and run the robot and everything however we can not get the code to stay on the robot after we restart the machine. We are currently downloading it onto the ram and we are aware that thats not the way to make it stay but we can not figure out the other way in order to have it saved on there. We researched a bit and found that we have to press download in win river, however it asks for a “ELF file?” and we have no such file with that extension in our entire project.
Help would be much appreciated,
David from team 2625
It looks like these folks, http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91896, are having a similar issue. To deploy the code you should go to Window->Preferences->FIRST Downloader Preferences. Set you team number and browse for the .out file that is created when you compile your project. When that is done goto FIRST->Deploy. Reboot your cRIO and it should be running your program.
An ELF file is any executable file in a unix/linux type OS such as vxWorks. Also there is no concept of a file extension in these types of OS’s. File extensions only exist in Windows (and maybe Macs, not sure). So that means the .out file from your project is an ELF file. Hope that helps, good luck!
Window>preferences>FIRST downloader and enter you team, the file is (project dir)\PPC603gnu\Debug\Something.out (or something like that)
close that, and go to FIRST>Deploy
Background:
ELF refers to “Executable and Linkable Format”. WindRiver is asking “hey man, where can I find the actual binary code to put on the robot?”. The file you’re inputting there (the .out file) is the binary code for your robot software, and is (I believe) ELF format, despite the .out extension.