Toady We Lost All our Programming And We really need Help Trying to make a new one.
Well, there are certainly people here who’d love to help. However, first know that it’ll be a lot easier to get help in person from someone at the regional. Then again, in the interest of getting as much work done tonight as possible, it’d be helpful to answer the following questions.
- What language are you using? (I suppose if you’re restarting you could switch if you like.)
- What’s you’re robot like? What subsystems does it have? How do they move? Do they have sensors?
- What do you need those subsystems to do?
- Which parts of question 3 do you need help with?
I know a not-too-complicated program can be finished in under 3 hours with command-based Java, and I’m sure similar times are possible in the other languages. But to provide help, we need to know how to help first.
Good luck!
1.Language: Labview (Which Language Do you prefer )
2.Our DriveBase Consist of 2 Wheel Drive each Motor Is Controlled By A Jaguars (2 Jaguars total)
3.Our Shooter consist two Motor’s Controlled By two Victor 888 Motor Controllers
4.Our Pneumatic System Consist Of Two Air Cylinder which are Controlled By One Double Solenoid Each
(Thanks For Helping Us )
How did you lose your code? Any chance of recovering it?
Also, proper capitalization makes it much easier to read and understand a post.
Did it accidentally get deleted somehow, or did the laptop die? If the first option: http://www.piriform.com/recuva.
I’m going to use this opportunity to make a quick point:
Always back up your critical files. If your team only has one programmer, then something like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Skydrive should work perfectly fine for you. If your team has more than one experienced programmer, and especially if you’re using the text-based languages (Java, C++, or Python), you can used a more advanced backup solution such as Subversion or Git (both of which are built into Netbeans and WindRiver IIRC) along with Github or Bitbucket, which provide advanced features that can make life a bit easier if you know how to use them.
Always keep a copy of your working code backed up somewhere, somehow. Flash drive, different computer, the cloud, repository hosting website, doesn’t matter. Hard drives fail, computers fall. You never know what might happen.
Yep. Definitely let this be a lesson. However, matches start in a matter of hours, so let’s do our best to get the robot running.
The last time I used LabVIEW for a robot was 2010, but hopefully the following advice helps. (I’m much more familiar with Java, but you should use whatever your team knows best, not what some random guy on the internet likes.)
If you don’t know where to start, check out these links:
- Robot Framework Tutorial.
- WPI Robotics Library Overview.
- More generally, the FIRST Robotics Competition Community on NI’s website, especially the Training Material and Resources (which is how I found the previous two things).
The first two are probably the most helpful.
From what I can tell, here’s what you’d have to do to get a basic teleop working:
- The project has basic arcade drive built-in, so just make sure the port numbers for your drivetrain are right in Begin.vi and that should work.
- In Begin.vi, make sure all of your motors, pneumatics, and joysticks are initialized.
- In Teleop.vi, you need to link joystick inputs to various motor and pneumatic actions. The drive is done already, which leaves the shooter and pneumatics. Use the built-in drive as an example of how to do this.
Given that I’m not good at LabVIEW, that I don’t know exactly how you want your controls to work, and that it’s kind of late at night, I can’t give much specific help. I have a feeling that you may need shift registers for things like turning your shooter or pneumatics on or off with buttons.
Hope that helps!
If necessary, start installing the tools immediately and let the CSA or other officials at the event know what you need help with. It should only take an hour to write the code the second time and perhaps an hour to test and tweak it.
I once helped a team from Puerto Rico rewrite their code in 30 minutes – I don’t speak much Spanish. His English was pretty good, but he wasn’t the programmer and had never used LV before. I sat in the back seat and he drove. It was a fun experience for both of us.
Whatever you produce, make a backup, or two, with good names. Then give the backups to different dependable people. Consider how you could prevent getting in this situation the next time.
Greg McKaskle
Here is one thing that we have done to help avoid this problem. We have implemented a shared drive with Google Drive - all members of the programming team have access to it. When a change / update to the code is made a backup copy is copied to the local share directory and it is then synchronized to Google Drive.
I am enclosing a copy of the batch file we use and an executable called now.exe (source code included) to get the current date and time. Just copy now.exe to a location in your path and add BackupCode.bat to you LABView project under the My Computer folder. Anytime you want a backup of your current code, double click “BackupCode.bat”
Note: You will have to modify the BackupCode.bat to point to the correct directories and project name.
Project.bmp (323 KB)
BackupProject.zip (23.6 KB)
Project.bmp (323 KB)
BackupProject.zip (23.6 KB)
Our team programs in labview, and we are eager to help in any way we can! Do you still need assistance, or are you getting help there?
Yes, i Still need Help i am not a programmer, but i am good with computer’s
The problem with lab-view is it takes forever to install/program and upload.
i’d recommend java if you want to do something quick.
Go through this step by step and you should be fine.