Learning

[ahudson]

My team does not have a mentor for the programmers. Everything they know they have learned on their own, from other teams, or from Chief Delphi forums (thanks). As we near the end of our off-season, they are diving into programming a practice drive base using talon srx controllers. I have found the following links for them to research and study.
https://phoenix-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
https://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/currentCS/m/labview/l/599752-talon-srx-can

Does anyone else know of any other good resources to learn programming talon srx controllers in labview?

[NShep98]

“HaVe YoU cOnSiDeReD sWiTcHiNg To JaVa?”
There, I said it. Right at the top so no one else has to.

Anyway, if you just search up “National Instruments FRC” you’ll find their page of FRC specific programming resources, if you haven’t tried that already

[Tom_Line]

There are two general resources that are good but don’t necessarily talk about the talons. The first is the secrets to labview for FRC. Enabled consulting also did a nice set of videos but they are slighty outdated.

The Secret Book of FRC LabVIEW

When I first started trying to teach LabVIEW programming to FRC team members, I became very frustrated. I don’t program for a living, but I do pretend to be a semi-competent LabVIEW programmer at work. But when I started with FRC, I found the Robot Framework completely mystifying. Worse, I could not find a book to explain it all to me. Here is that book. Or rather, a first draft. Please respond with typos, errors, glaringly obvious topics I should have covered, but didn’t, etc. The book i…

[ahudson]

I do not even know why we started with Labview, except the first kickoff we went to that is what they told us to do. We have been learning little by little since then. So, here is your chance as a Java advocate…convince me why we should learn a different language now.

[ahudson]

Thanks! I will direct them to this information.

[Amicus1]

Advantage number one: you’ll get a lot more help with java than with lab view.
Advantage number two: it’s easier to share code and copy paste off of tutorials. While drag/drop is a thing and screenshots also help, text based code can be viewed and copied by people without the labview editor.
Several more but those are what I can think of off the top of my head.
3: irrelevant ignore.
Disclaimer I know next to nothing about labview, and what I do know is based on other topics similar to this one.

[ngreen]

# 1 is a fair point. Though there is help around, but maybe not the next pit over.
# 2 is not really true because you can make snippets and drag/drop code. http://www.team358.org/files/programming/ControlSystem2015-2019/labview/index.php
# 3 is irrelevant.

[oscarfonloz]

ahudson, my team uses LabVIEW and these are the resources we have to get up and running with it:

1. Understand the LabVIEW basics here: NI Getting Started Microsite
2. Review the basics of LabVIEW programming here: Learn LabVIEW
3. Get the LabVIEW programming badge: LabVIEW Programming
4. Learn about the robot project (LabVIEW in FRC) here: Robot Framework Tutorial

For Phoenix tools (Talon SRX, and Victor SPX) the documentation they provide is mostly in LabVIEW, too. If you have specific questions, my team uses them extensively and we are happy to provide assistance.

[ahudson]

Thank you! We may contact you soon. We are meeting tonight. The first time since I sent them all the documentation to be familiar with. We will see how far they get.

[NShep98]

I was more making fun of the fact that whenever someone posts a thread asking a Labview question, there’s usually at least one person who suggests they try changing languages. Whatever language you’ve decided on by now, it’s probably a bit late to change.

[justlexi93]

https://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/currentCS/m/java/l/479803-talon-srx-can

Feel free to check this website I feel like there a lot of great PDF here that can help you with Talon SRX controller.

[Jonathan_L]

This is a copy and paste of a list of resources I have.

• The Secret Book of FRC LabVIEW The latest version as of this writing is on post number 21 on the 2nd page. This is a couple years old so you might see things like ‘cRIO’ when we will be using the ‘roboRIO’ or static IP addresses (like 10.10.94.2) where we use DNS addresses (like roborio-1094-frc.local) but I think you will be able to connect the dots.
• LabVIEW For FRC: Episode 1 - Interface There are more videos on the youtube channel.
• FUNdamentals videos by FIRST Updates Now
• FRC 358 LabVIEW Tutorials
• 5801 LabVIEW Reference
• Resources from National Instruments
• LearnNI.com
• FRCLabVIEWTutorials.com
• Videos by FRC 2550
• Tutorials by National Instruments
• Getting Started with LabVIEW (not FRC specific) video series These videos explain the very basics of LabVIEW. Past video number 10 it starts using hardware that we don’t have but some of the concepts may still be interesting.
• LabVIEW Wiki

We use LabVIEW not because it is the most popular in FRC but because it is commonly used in industry. NI has released a LabVIEW Community edition (beta) so it can now be used outside of FRC for private, free use. http://ni.com/beta

[ahudson]

This is a great list of resources. Thank you for sharing.

[djp0915]

Coming from a similar situation, I had to learn programming all on my own with no mentor help at all and I decided on java. Personally, I suggest you try and use java as most of us on here use java and can offer more help and it seems to me when I tried labview that java is much easier. I happen to prefer a conventional programming experience but as for if you stick with labview I wouldn’t be able to offer support. However you may find help here https://phoenix-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html