Hello, my name is Arian Tashakori from team 3355 in Arlington Texas. I’m having a lot of difficulty with programming with labview, as this is my first year of programming and I dont know any mentors or alumni that have expirience with labview. I’ve attempted to follow guides online and videos, but I have not seen any great success with this. I do not have an idea on how I approach this season as I dont have an idea on how to program effectively. If anyone has any really friendly guides for drivetrains and motors using CAN, please suggest and post them here as I’m open to look into anything that may help me understand and get better at labview.
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great day!
I don’t know any LabView but have you considered java? There are lots of useful and practical guides for that.
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Hi Arian,
If your team doesn’t have any mentors with FRC programming experience, it’s best you try and find another nearby team that can provide in-person help. I would suggest asking your coach/head mentor to contact some other teams in the Dallas/FW area to see if anyone can lend a programming mentor during one or two days of the remainder of build season to visit your team and help set up some basic driving functionality and answer questions. Good luck!
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I realize you may have already invested time in LabView, but if it’s still an option I’d recommend switching to Java. I don’t know much about LabView, but most people in First use Java so it’s easier to find similar code to what you’re trying to accomplish and find guides. Other than that make sure you’re looking at code on github and reading all the documentation for the equipment you’re using, which sometimes includes sample code which can give you a starting point to expand from.
Edit: Additionally, if you do decide to switch to and have little programming experience with Java, some basic free resources like CodeAcademy can help as a starting point to understand what you’re working with. It’s easy to find code similar to what you’re trying to do if you research enough, so while you might not want to get too fancy, you only really need basic Java knowledge.
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My coach and all my mentors in mechanics are new so we dont have any contacts. All my friends in other teams use java and C++. Is there a way to find teams within the area?
There’s a few ways to find out which teams are near you. One way is to check out teams that are attending the same district events as you. If you aren’t familiar with The Blue Alliance, I would suggest checking it out.
You can also find a map showing FRC teams here.
For contacting them, try and find an email address on a team website or some other POC. I can’t speak for Texas, but I know in Indiana there is a well-established mentor network, so even if a team can’t help you directly, they may be able to help spread the word.
- There are some good LabVIEW learning resources in this thread: Learning
- You can also review the Secret Book of FRC LabVIEW (and control logic) version 2.07, which has been revised for roboRIO and will give you a comprehensive “tour” of the FRC framework.
- I also recommend you watch the videos: FUNdamentals of LabVIEW for FRC
Regarding mentors in Texas, I advise reaching out to the FiT senior mentor of your area: FIRST In Texas - Contact Us
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4206 seems to be an established team near you who should be able to offer help in person.
Their contact info from their website
Ray Depta
Head Coach
4501 Bridge Street | Fort Worth, Texas 76103
817-457-2920
I highly recommend reaching out to a team near you since you are brand new to this and will need quite a bit of help.
For other help you should keep posting to CD here and we will find folks to help you. Worst case scenario, we will get people to help you at your first event in Plano.
118, 148, 5414, and many others will gladly help you out at the event. But before that, reach out to 4206 via the email or calling them.
@ahartnet @ParkerF @artdutra04 just a heads up for Plano.
Specifically, try to PM @EuphraneousBlair457 or hopefully he will be able to reach out to you. He is their team’s software mentor according to their website.
For what its worth I also recommend switching to Java if you can and don’t already have a Labview codebase to work off of.
Please also ask your mentors and seniors if there is a team codebase available that they just aren’t telling you about for some reason.
Seconding pretty much all of what Akash said. I can kind of sorta help with LabVIEW, but I haven’t touched it since 2014 and am not sure what’s changed. But if you don’t have a reason that you have to use LabVIEW, then you’ll get a lot more support switching to Java, which is by far the most commonly used language as can been seen in the usage report here https://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2020/2019-frc-usage-data-anon.xlsx
If you do want to stick with LabVIEW - I know 2468 and 624 are two great Texas teams that use LabVIEW that you could reach out to
I’ll reach out with a PM with some options to help remotely before competition, but please k ow that during competition 5414 will be happy to help at anytime.
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Thank you for the help! I’ve taken a look at a few of the resources already but some of the new ones are definitely helping me understand the software and how things work. I appreciate you answering my question, that you again!
Thank you for the help! I’ll definitely reach out and read into Java for programming. Hopefully it’s not too late in the reason! Thank you again.
Also about codebases and such, I’m sure one of our old mentors have them saves, but all of our mentors are new and our coach is also new. Additionally all of the members last year that did programming have left so that left me in a pickle. I tried to find a way to dissect the code that was in our robot from last year, but I did not have the code on the laptop and it seemed to be no way of getting the code from the roborio into the new laptop.
Thank you for your help, I appreciate the links and advice and I’m going to be researching and learning about java more. In case I do stick to labview, I’ll see if I can reach out to the teams and find solutions to my predicament. Thank you again for taking your time to respond!
For LabVIEW here is a link to a resource. The first chapter is all about how to do LabVIEW. The rest of the book is about how to program a control system (robot framework, timers, state machines, position control, etc.)
As far as which language, I think that LabVIEW is faster to learn and easier for multiple students to collaborate on. It really depends on the expertise of your students.
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