Ok, I’m trying to help the students work on the C++ code for the robot and am getting my head around the build/deploy process. The students had a HORRIBLE time getting it working initially for a variety of reasons and we are still not there yet but close. I’m trying to plan 2 steps ahead - where can I find documentation about what we can do with C++ on the robot outside of the WPI robot library docs? For instance, we are likely to need serial communication working and the WPI docs have nothing. We could use native C code but we need documentation on what’s available on the cRIO. Where is this available? Thanks!
-Mike
While it’s not the platform C++ docs, the WPI API docs have enough info for serial communication. Here they are:
http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/go/doc1198?nav=1
You probably will not need to interface with any device that is not covered by the WPILib. If you want to get ahead I would focus on understanding WPILib and the classes/interfaces it exposes.
Link to the relevant documents (You might need to create an account):
http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/docman/do/listDocuments/projects.wpilib/docman.root.c_and_java_documentation
Relevant Docs:
2012 WPILib Cookbook
WPI Robotics Library Users Guide
C++ Getting Started Guide
Yes, WPILib does support Serial communication, take a look at SerialPort.cpp and SerialPort.h
I know that the cRIO can handle many of the basic C++ functions, such as the variety of string methods, and it is fully compatible with math.h.