I was having a discussion with one of the members of the build team, and we were discussing how besides our 2010 Bot, we currently don’t have any working robots ready to go. With Build season coming up, I know that we will soon be saying goodbye to our 2010 Bot as well and for a few weeks, won’t have anything working to show to potential sponsors etc.
After some discussion we decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to refit our 2010 robot with the control system parts from the 2008 robot and use this one for display. The problem is we have no one left on our team who worked with those. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to attempt to make this work though!
So I have some basic questions to get me started with some help from you guys
What software will I need to work with these?
How do you hook both boards up (including configuring them)
How (type of wires) do I load code onto these.
What languages are these compatible with?
Any other important information?
If someone has past documentation for the control system, and any instillation packages for the required software that would be great!
We programmed in C (I think the only other option was EASY-C or some other visual C, but I have no experience with that).
If you want, pm me your email and I’ll send you an image of the cd with the software (assuming I can find it…). I also have some code lying around if you want.
I was in programming and electrical on my old team(from 2004-2007, and mentor 2008) and have a CD including anything you’ll ever need to work with the old IFI controllers… here’s the good news, I also live in CT! If you would like, I could join your programming and/or electrical team for a meeting to help you work through it. Feel free to send me a private message here if you have any questions or want to set something up!
All of the above links will guide you to the information you need, but here is a basic summary of the answers to your questions-
The old control system is programmed in C, typically using the MPLab IDE. Easy C is a visual C option, but wasn’t used very much. You download the code via a serial cable, so chances are that you will need a USB-serial converter.
As for the wiring- You’ll find that it is incredibly similar to the current control system. The easiest way to learn this is to check out the wiring diagrams. The main difference is that the big blue power distribution board in the current control system replaces two separate boards in the old system- the gold maxi fuse block (for motor/victor power) and the black fuse board (for lower-power devices).
Sorry if this is hijacking the topic a bit, but it seems to be the best place to ask this right now.
I followed the instructions in Mark’s link and downloaded everything to my home computer (I don’t have the programming laptop right now and I wanted to test if this worked). I loaded up the workspace and the project, set the device to PIC18F8722, and attempted to compile the default code in frc-code-2007-8722.zip. When I compile I get an error about an ADC_16ANA being undefined. I traced the symbol back to adc.h, which only defines ADC_16ANA if ADC_V9 is defined. pconfig.h defines ADC_V5 for a PIC18F8722 though.
IFI’s website says you have to use MPLAB ver 7.20 and C18 Compiler ver 2.40 (http://www.ifirobotics.com/rc.shtml). You can find an educational version of the compiler and MPLAB 7.2 is out there somewhere. I was able to get the system working for myself a couple months ago. If you need a hand, or a ZIP of MPLAB and the complier, let me know
You need to use a 3.x version of the FRC libraries with the 3.x compiler.
You might want to look at Kevin Watson’s remake of a default program. It has 2.x and 3.x libraries for both the 8520 (2004-2005) as well as the 8722 (2006-2008) versions of the FRC Robot Controller and is better documented: http://kevin.org/frc/ifi_frc_simple.zip
MPLAB has some options you may have missed that need to be set correctly.
Double check the settings under Project->Build Options->Project
Specifically,
the ones for Include Path and Library Path under the General tab.
*]The settings under the MPLAB C18 tab/general. I have -D_FRC_BOARD and use the Large Code/data memory model
I won’t have a machine to test and troubleshoot the latest compiler on until after New Years.
Thanks for the help, I found a link to the student edition of v2.40. Funny how googling with site:chiefdelphi.com works better than the search function on here