Tonight we un-bagged our machine for a couple hours and did some minor maintenance work to the frame, chassis and drive-train. All looked to be in good shape, however our drive chain had stretched ever-so-slightly and was slipping a little under extreme conditions. It was nothing that our build team couldn't fix in about 10 minutes.
Our programming team only had a few things to tweak / test and it was like they'd been on a month long vacation (oh wait, I guess they have sorta). It took a little longer than normal to get things flowing again, never-the-less we tested some things and made a few changes. We'll get everything wrapped up tomorrow, I hope.
Our drive team also had a little time to remember how to drive the robot. I guess it's just like riding a bike.
Anyhow, tomorrow more of the same.
Showing posts with label Programming and Electrical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Programming and Electrical. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Look Mom - No Hands!
Tonight our team got back together after not meeting for a while. It was mentioned that a video had appeared on YouTube of our robot scoring autonomously in Traverse City. The video was taken by a friend of one of the mentors on our team. The quality is quite good and primarily focuses on our team. You can hear "904" being chanted in the background.
Watch from the very beginning, because we are in the process of our autonomous score when the video starts.
For anyone not knowing, autonomous mode is when the robot uses its sensors and computer to track the opponent and score. This was certainly a "Look Mom - No Hands" moment.
Watch from the very beginning, because we are in the process of our autonomous score when the video starts.
For anyone not knowing, autonomous mode is when the robot uses its sensors and computer to track the opponent and score. This was certainly a "Look Mom - No Hands" moment.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Programming
We have just about finished programming and testing all software for this years robot.
We had a few weird results from our switch box over the past few days, but that all seems to be behind us. Here is a picture of our switch box, now to be known as the "Skull Switch".
We are now working on code that will act like a heat seeking missile. It will track an opponent and score if the driver holds down a unique button on the controller. The thought behind this was simply if the drivers are not able to see what is happening on the field, due to the fact that the field will be packed with robots and trailers, that if the camera can see an opponent, it should be able to score. When we left tonight we were about 90% there.
Tomorrow will be our last night of work before we load it up for this weekend's competition. More tomorrow on how I'll be posting information from our competitions.
We had a few weird results from our switch box over the past few days, but that all seems to be behind us. Here is a picture of our switch box, now to be known as the "Skull Switch".
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
We are now working on code that will act like a heat seeking missile. It will track an opponent and score if the driver holds down a unique button on the controller. The thought behind this was simply if the drivers are not able to see what is happening on the field, due to the fact that the field will be packed with robots and trailers, that if the camera can see an opponent, it should be able to score. When we left tonight we were about 90% there.
Tomorrow will be our last night of work before we load it up for this weekend's competition. More tomorrow on how I'll be posting information from our competitions.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Back to Robotics
Re-cap: All Michigan FIRST teams put their competition robot in a huge bag on the day that most teams ship their robot. Michigan now has 7 district events rather than 3 regional events. Michigan teams get to participate in 2 district events for about the same price as a traditional regional. The district events are only 2 days long (no Thursday), thus eliminating costs and time away from school. Teams in Michigan also transport their machine to each event.
To make up for the time most teams have on the Thursday before a competition, Michigan teams have 8 hours to work on their robot during the week before any event in which they are competing. We are competing this weekend, so we used about 2 1/2 hours tonight to make some electrical fixes and programming changes.
We fixed our box of switches that will allow us to select different autonomous modes; it seems to be working well now. We also sorted through a few problems with the gyro and it seems to be working now as well.
We worked on different autonomous modes that will drive different patterns using the gyro as guidance.
Tomorrow we will pull the robot out of its bag again for another 2 or 3 hours and do some more tinkering. We have completed all the necessities and are now working on the gravy projects. More news tomorrow.
To make up for the time most teams have on the Thursday before a competition, Michigan teams have 8 hours to work on their robot during the week before any event in which they are competing. We are competing this weekend, so we used about 2 1/2 hours tonight to make some electrical fixes and programming changes.
We fixed our box of switches that will allow us to select different autonomous modes; it seems to be working well now. We also sorted through a few problems with the gyro and it seems to be working now as well.
We worked on different autonomous modes that will drive different patterns using the gyro as guidance.
Tomorrow we will pull the robot out of its bag again for another 2 or 3 hours and do some more tinkering. We have completed all the necessities and are now working on the gravy projects. More news tomorrow.
Friday, February 13, 2009
4 Days to Go
We're getting down to the end now; we only have one more day to drive (tomorrow) and we probably won't be able to do a lot of programming either. We did have some success tonight.
The color tracking code is working better; I'm really curious how it behaves on a real field and in different lighting conditions. Our switches for selecting autonomous modes is working, with a few issues. We have 4 functioning switches that will allow us to select up to 16 distinct "plays" to run while the computer is controlling the robot. I don't think we'll end up with that many, but it always safe to have the option. Our sonar sensor seemed to be working, at least better than last time. Last time we tried it, the sensor crashed the software. Tonight, the sonar was working; giving us data, but it didn't seem like the data was correct. Sensing the distance we are away from the opponent's trailer will be crucial in order for us to score.
I wish we still had about 4 weeks to tinker with the different sensors and ways of implementing them, but our deadline is quickly approaching. At this point a year ago, most of our drive code worked, and we had never even attempted to test any autonomous modes. We are in a little better situation this year. :)
The color tracking code is working better; I'm really curious how it behaves on a real field and in different lighting conditions. Our switches for selecting autonomous modes is working, with a few issues. We have 4 functioning switches that will allow us to select up to 16 distinct "plays" to run while the computer is controlling the robot. I don't think we'll end up with that many, but it always safe to have the option. Our sonar sensor seemed to be working, at least better than last time. Last time we tried it, the sensor crashed the software. Tonight, the sonar was working; giving us data, but it didn't seem like the data was correct. Sensing the distance we are away from the opponent's trailer will be crucial in order for us to score.
I wish we still had about 4 weeks to tinker with the different sensors and ways of implementing them, but our deadline is quickly approaching. At this point a year ago, most of our drive code worked, and we had never even attempted to test any autonomous modes. We are in a little better situation this year. :)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
We've Updated our Hardware
I've been reading items online regarding a mandatory update to the Driver Station and cRIO. It was not explained well at all, and it took me a little digging to figure out exactly what we needed to do. Our team is programming in C/C++ with Wind River and we haven't been too concerned with updates to LabVIEW, but this was the missing piece.
I found the Driver Station update from the FIRST website, but couldn't find the new image for the cRIO. It turns out that running the LabVIEW update, installs the necessary zip file that can be used with the LabVIEW tool that updates the cRIO image.
Tonight we updated both the Driver Station and the cRIO and were able to take advantage of the new feature of being able to dispaly custom information on the Driver Station. Sweet!! This all worked great, so with a little time left we decided to debug some of the quirks in our color tracking code. Time ended up running out with little progress on the color tracking code.
Tomorrow we will be meeting with our friends from Team 2771 - Code Red (yes that is a link to their website, I just found it - check it out, they've done a nice job). Tomorrow we hope to test our sonar for stopping in autonomous as well as our switches for selecting a specific autonomous mode. We should also be able to have our drive team practice quite a bit too.
I found the Driver Station update from the FIRST website, but couldn't find the new image for the cRIO. It turns out that running the LabVIEW update, installs the necessary zip file that can be used with the LabVIEW tool that updates the cRIO image.
Tonight we updated both the Driver Station and the cRIO and were able to take advantage of the new feature of being able to dispaly custom information on the Driver Station. Sweet!! This all worked great, so with a little time left we decided to debug some of the quirks in our color tracking code. Time ended up running out with little progress on the color tracking code.
Tomorrow we will be meeting with our friends from Team 2771 - Code Red (yes that is a link to their website, I just found it - check it out, they've done a nice job). Tomorrow we hope to test our sonar for stopping in autonomous as well as our switches for selecting a specific autonomous mode. We should also be able to have our drive team practice quite a bit too.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Our Software is Almost Complete
Tonight we were starting to run out of things that we need to work on for the software that will control our robot. We're at a point where we have a lot of things to test, and our timing is perfect. Tomorrow we will be packing up and going out to the beautiful city of Holland Michigan where Team 74 Holland C.H.A.O.S. is letting us test, tweak and drive on their full size field.
Our drive team will be able to practice maneuvers and test handling, while the programming team will be testing and tweaking our autonomous code as well as our traction control code. We should also be able to get practice throwing the balls over the wall and into the trailer.
Tomorrow I should have a lot more to write about, and maybe a picture or two.
Our drive team will be able to practice maneuvers and test handling, while the programming team will be testing and tweaking our autonomous code as well as our traction control code. We should also be able to get practice throwing the balls over the wall and into the trailer.
Tomorrow I should have a lot more to write about, and maybe a picture or two.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Traction Control Really Gets Us Going
We had a real successful night of programming tonight. I think we stunned a few of the adult mentors and really excited some of the students that hadn't really seen what we have been working on for the past 5 weeks.
We had the robot on a slippery tiled floor and spent a good part of our time tweaking our traction control code. We wrote some simple code that was intended to "ramp-up" the speed of the drive motors in the event the driver mashed the stick all the way forward or backwards. In past tests if the driver did this, the wheels would spin and it took the robot a lot of time to get moving.
After our tweaking, the code was running great. We even did some tests to try to make the robot lose traction. 2 students and 2 mentors, all sitting in chairs with wheels on them, arranged themselves in front of the robot, such that when the robot started to move they would all get pushed forward. Our robot was able to start off, never slipping a wheel, and pushed all 4 people and chairs across the room. Score 1 for the programming team.
For our next trick we tried our camera code in one of our autonomous modes. We modified the code so that the robot, once it found the target, would drive towards and follow the target. I think this one left a few of the adults speechless. We enabled the robot in autonomous mode and the servos fired and centered the camera. It began panning, back and forth, then as soon as it spotted the target, it began driving towards the target and as the target moved the robot adjusted accordingly and kept following it. This was very cool; score another for the programming team!
We've come a long way in a short amount of time, but we cannot get over confident. We still have a lot of loose ends to tie up. Our deadline is approaching and we need to keep our noses to the grindstone.
We had the robot on a slippery tiled floor and spent a good part of our time tweaking our traction control code. We wrote some simple code that was intended to "ramp-up" the speed of the drive motors in the event the driver mashed the stick all the way forward or backwards. In past tests if the driver did this, the wheels would spin and it took the robot a lot of time to get moving.
After our tweaking, the code was running great. We even did some tests to try to make the robot lose traction. 2 students and 2 mentors, all sitting in chairs with wheels on them, arranged themselves in front of the robot, such that when the robot started to move they would all get pushed forward. Our robot was able to start off, never slipping a wheel, and pushed all 4 people and chairs across the room. Score 1 for the programming team.
For our next trick we tried our camera code in one of our autonomous modes. We modified the code so that the robot, once it found the target, would drive towards and follow the target. I think this one left a few of the adults speechless. We enabled the robot in autonomous mode and the servos fired and centered the camera. It began panning, back and forth, then as soon as it spotted the target, it began driving towards the target and as the target moved the robot adjusted accordingly and kept following it. This was very cool; score another for the programming team!
We've come a long way in a short amount of time, but we cannot get over confident. We still have a lot of loose ends to tie up. Our deadline is approaching and we need to keep our noses to the grindstone.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
13 days to go
We've selected 2 students that will be our primary robot drivers for this year. We will be making this announcement at tomorrow's full team meeting. We also discussed our travel plans for our first competition in Traverse City at the end of the month.
Tonight we finished up the simple acceleration ramp-up code, and will probably try it on the robot tomorrow, if we have enough time. We're still making good progress, I just wish it was a little quicker.
We haven't had any of the "week 5 gotchas" like we had last year, although last year most of our problems were related to the gyro. This year the gyro isn't going to be as important in our autonomous strategies.
Tonight we finished up the simple acceleration ramp-up code, and will probably try it on the robot tomorrow, if we have enough time. We're still making good progress, I just wish it was a little quicker.
We haven't had any of the "week 5 gotchas" like we had last year, although last year most of our problems were related to the gyro. This year the gyro isn't going to be as important in our autonomous strategies.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Two Weeks to Go
There isn't a lot new to write about tonight. We had our standard 3 hour meeting and within that time the mentors had a private meeting where we discussed the drive team members. There were a few students that expressed interest in driving the robot that were not able to be at either our video game tournament or the drivers practice on Saturday. We decided we'd give the few extras a fair chance tomorrow evening, and we'd make our final decision shortly thereafter.
About all we accomplished tonight was read data from the sonar or ultrasonic sensor. This little device blasts out lots of high frequency sound waves. If the sound waves bounce off something and return to the sensor it will output a voltage that represents how far away the object is from which the sound waves bounced. We hope to use this device in conjunction with our camera to give the robot an indication of the distance to our opponent.
Tomorrow we will be wiring up our gyro and accelerometer and hopefully getting some useful information from both.
About all we accomplished tonight was read data from the sonar or ultrasonic sensor. This little device blasts out lots of high frequency sound waves. If the sound waves bounce off something and return to the sensor it will output a voltage that represents how far away the object is from which the sound waves bounced. We hope to use this device in conjunction with our camera to give the robot an indication of the distance to our opponent.
Tomorrow we will be wiring up our gyro and accelerometer and hopefully getting some useful information from both.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Don't Always Believe the Build Team
Thursdays are the one day each week where the entire team meets and we all discuss our progress through the week. Today, our meeting took well over an hour and by the time we got stuff set up to continue our programming, we had about an hour and a half to actually work.
We have worked out all the problems with using source code control. We are making updates to the base code and both of our programmers are writing good code.
Tonight we solved a problem that the build team was blaming on the programming team. We have a motor that will be used to dump the moon rocks out the front of our bin. The motor ran fine in one direction, however when we reversed it, it went incredibly slow. The build team said that we must have programmed it wrong. It turned out that the speed controller, a Victor, was blown. So it wasn't a programming problem, just a bad speed controller. So kids, don't always believe the build team!
It's time for a new picture; this was taken a couple days ago, and our robot actually looked a lot more complete tonight.
Tomorrow night we are having a video game tournament to help determine who will be on the drive team this year. Check back tomorrow for an update on the night of gaming.
We have worked out all the problems with using source code control. We are making updates to the base code and both of our programmers are writing good code.
Tonight we solved a problem that the build team was blaming on the programming team. We have a motor that will be used to dump the moon rocks out the front of our bin. The motor ran fine in one direction, however when we reversed it, it went incredibly slow. The build team said that we must have programmed it wrong. It turned out that the speed controller, a Victor, was blown. So it wasn't a programming problem, just a bad speed controller. So kids, don't always believe the build team!
It's time for a new picture; this was taken a couple days ago, and our robot actually looked a lot more complete tonight.
 |
| From 2009 Build Season |
Tomorrow night we are having a video game tournament to help determine who will be on the drive team this year. Check back tomorrow for an update on the night of gaming.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
We Have it Under Control
We are approaching the half way point through build season this year. Our programming team has made good progress and have been working through various issues with our code. One thing that has been a little tricky up to this point, was making sure all our code changes were getting passed around to the entire programming team.
Today I dug deeper into source code control systems. If you're not familiar with source code control, it is a software package that tracks who changes what in the source code files, and doesn't let any changes get lost. I have experience using the Microsoft product, Visual Source Safe, but hadn't experienced any of the Open Source products such as Subversion. I installed the free Subversion sever, Visual SVN on my laptop and began messing around with setting up code repositories and testing it's interaction with Wind River (our development environment). I did also play around with Tortoise SVN, which allows you to interact with the Subversion Server directly from Windows Explorer.
After some monkeying around, I figured out pretty much how it all works. It looks like when we get back together on Monday, we'll be able to easily exchange our source code files, and track who made what changes. So, from now on, all our source code should be under control.
Today I dug deeper into source code control systems. If you're not familiar with source code control, it is a software package that tracks who changes what in the source code files, and doesn't let any changes get lost. I have experience using the Microsoft product, Visual Source Safe, but hadn't experienced any of the Open Source products such as Subversion. I installed the free Subversion sever, Visual SVN on my laptop and began messing around with setting up code repositories and testing it's interaction with Wind River (our development environment). I did also play around with Tortoise SVN, which allows you to interact with the Subversion Server directly from Windows Explorer.
After some monkeying around, I figured out pretty much how it all works. It looks like when we get back together on Monday, we'll be able to easily exchange our source code files, and track who made what changes. So, from now on, all our source code should be under control.
Friday, January 23, 2009
S'mores Anyone?
Note: When working on robots / electronics and you see fire and people start yelling, turn off the power quick, because this is not a good thing.
Yes, tonight we had ourselves a "short". I believe this is a technical term, probably a shortened version of "short-circuit".
We were working quick to test some new code and against my recommendations, the students brought the robot into our programming room with only 30 minutes left in our day. I knew we didn't have enough time to mount the board, connect all the drive motors, test the software, and tear it all apart in the time we had left. Our eager students didn't see it my way and they began feverishly connecting the board to the robot. I wanted to be a team player and not the old fuddy duddy, so I helped hold the control board while the students worked to attach it to the hinges on the robot. Little did we know that someone had already plugged the board into the big battery and the power was live.
Apparently a stray PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) cable, used for carrying signals (not power) crossed paths with our main power cable. Unfortunately, not all of our connections are clean yet and we shorted a small wire with a very large one. This caused the small fire, lots of yelling, some smoke and ended with me killing the power and blowing real hard on some melting wires.
Nothing was damaged, other than some wire (not a big deal). We all learned a good lesson though... next time we'll have some fixens for S'mores with us. :)
Yes, tonight we had ourselves a "short". I believe this is a technical term, probably a shortened version of "short-circuit".
We were working quick to test some new code and against my recommendations, the students brought the robot into our programming room with only 30 minutes left in our day. I knew we didn't have enough time to mount the board, connect all the drive motors, test the software, and tear it all apart in the time we had left. Our eager students didn't see it my way and they began feverishly connecting the board to the robot. I wanted to be a team player and not the old fuddy duddy, so I helped hold the control board while the students worked to attach it to the hinges on the robot. Little did we know that someone had already plugged the board into the big battery and the power was live.
Apparently a stray PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) cable, used for carrying signals (not power) crossed paths with our main power cable. Unfortunately, not all of our connections are clean yet and we shorted a small wire with a very large one. This caused the small fire, lots of yelling, some smoke and ended with me killing the power and blowing real hard on some melting wires.
Nothing was damaged, other than some wire (not a big deal). We all learned a good lesson though... next time we'll have some fixens for S'mores with us. :)
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tough Tasks, No Problem
It's funny how the most difficult tasks turn into everyone's favorites. I guess it's because if something is easy, anyone can do it, and the kids that are involved in FIRST are not just any kids. They are smart, curious, innovative, and want to solve the hardest problems first, just to show everyone that they are not just any kid.
For example, we've been working on our software to control the camera. Remember, we need to detect a distinct configuration of green and pink, one over the other, in this years game. We were pretty excited when we started getting confirmation from the software that it was indeed seeing the color configuration we were asking for.
Over the past couple days we've mounted the camera in a device that will allow the camera to rotate side-to-side, and also tilt up and down through the use of 2 servos. Tonight we began testing the code that will search for the proper color configuration, rather than just look straight ahead for it. We had to work through some problems before we started getting any movement from the servos, but we did get it to work. We powered up the robot controller, and as it finished it's boot-up sequence the camera started panning back and forth looking for the pink and green flag. As soon as we put the colors in the camera's search path, it would lock onto them and never look away. We could move the flags almost anywhere and the camera would follow right along. I'm sure there were other students in the room that thought someone was controlling the camera manually, but it was all driven by software.
So here we are almost at the end of week 3, and we're knocking off the toughest challenges in this years game. It helps that we have some awesome students that have all the qualities that I mentioned above. It sure is making my job easy. :)
For example, we've been working on our software to control the camera. Remember, we need to detect a distinct configuration of green and pink, one over the other, in this years game. We were pretty excited when we started getting confirmation from the software that it was indeed seeing the color configuration we were asking for.
Over the past couple days we've mounted the camera in a device that will allow the camera to rotate side-to-side, and also tilt up and down through the use of 2 servos. Tonight we began testing the code that will search for the proper color configuration, rather than just look straight ahead for it. We had to work through some problems before we started getting any movement from the servos, but we did get it to work. We powered up the robot controller, and as it finished it's boot-up sequence the camera started panning back and forth looking for the pink and green flag. As soon as we put the colors in the camera's search path, it would lock onto them and never look away. We could move the flags almost anywhere and the camera would follow right along. I'm sure there were other students in the room that thought someone was controlling the camera manually, but it was all driven by software.
So here we are almost at the end of week 3, and we're knocking off the toughest challenges in this years game. It helps that we have some awesome students that have all the qualities that I mentioned above. It sure is making my job easy. :)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
28 days to go
Yes, 4 short weeks from today we have to box up the robot and cannot work on it anymore. We do get to tweak things at the competitions, but all major work should be complete 28 days from today.
Our team met again tonight for another 3 hour session, and we worked through some odd issues with the color tracking software. For the most part it seems to be working; tomorrow or Thursday we will be hooking up servos to the camera so that we can pan and tilt the camera through software controls.
We are still having weird issues with some (not all) of our computers connecting to the robot to download updated software. We've found that powering cycling everything, the cRIO and DriverStation, seems to rectify some of these problems.
Tomorrow we are hoping to mount the control board on the robot and download "drive code" to enable it to drive under user control. Check back tomorrow and see how we did.
Our team met again tonight for another 3 hour session, and we worked through some odd issues with the color tracking software. For the most part it seems to be working; tomorrow or Thursday we will be hooking up servos to the camera so that we can pan and tilt the camera through software controls.
We are still having weird issues with some (not all) of our computers connecting to the robot to download updated software. We've found that powering cycling everything, the cRIO and DriverStation, seems to rectify some of these problems.
Tomorrow we are hoping to mount the control board on the robot and download "drive code" to enable it to drive under user control. Check back tomorrow and see how we did.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Show Me the Colors
One of the toughest tasks this year will be to make your robot "see" the trailers of the opposing alliance. Trailers will be marked with a cylindrical flag with either green over pink, or pink over green. During autonomous mode some robots will try to seek out their opposing alliance by determining the green/pink color configuration. If the robot can detect the right color combination, it can attempt to score points before the drivers actually take control of the robot.
Today we made progress by detecting green over pink:
Our program seems to be reading the colors correctly and outputting that information back to the VxWorks console on the computer.
As it stands right now, I'm very happy with what our programming team has accomplished so far. This is only the end of week 2 and we're consistently making good progress. It wasn't until about week 5 that we had lots of problems last year, so we've probably got some significant challenges ahead of us.
Today we made progress by detecting green over pink:
 | This picture shows our control board (4 Jaguars mounted above the power distribution board) with the Axis camera sitting atop a spool of wire. Its all facing the color samples that we attached to a cardboard box. |
| From FRC 2009 Hardware |
Our program seems to be reading the colors correctly and outputting that information back to the VxWorks console on the computer.
 | Opposite angle, showing camera on spool of wire, our control board and laptop in the background showing VxWorks console window. |
| From FRC 2009 Hardware |
As it stands right now, I'm very happy with what our programming team has accomplished so far. This is only the end of week 2 and we're consistently making good progress. It wasn't until about week 5 that we had lots of problems last year, so we've probably got some significant challenges ahead of us.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
With the new hardware this year, we have the luxury of plugging standard USB devices into the box that sends the commands to our robot on the field. This is a great improvement over years past, where we were limited to only interfacing with the Operator Interface/DriverStation with a standard Joystick adapter. "They" told us that a standard HID (Human Interface Device) compliant USB device would "probably" work with this years DriverStation.
So, with that in mind, I thought it would be easy to plug in an external USB numpad/keypad into the DriverStation and have 19 buttons to use; as opposed to wiring all our buttons by hand.
It turns out that HID compliant devices will only work with the new DriverStation if they are of the "Game Controller" flavor... Unfortunately this does not include our keypad.
So it looks like we're going to need to wire up some extra buttons again this year.
So, with that in mind, I thought it would be easy to plug in an external USB numpad/keypad into the DriverStation and have 19 buttons to use; as opposed to wiring all our buttons by hand.
It turns out that HID compliant devices will only work with the new DriverStation if they are of the "Game Controller" flavor... Unfortunately this does not include our keypad.
So it looks like we're going to need to wire up some extra buttons again this year.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
We've Passed All Our Tests
Our wireless network problems are now behind us and tonight we dug more into the camera code while running it in the Wind River debugger. At one point we had the camera recognizing the florescent pink and green that will be used to distinguish who is on which team. I worked with the debugger and a tried understanding some of the examples that we created.
I set out a few goals to meet before we started moving the components onto the Plexiglas sheet that will be mounted in the robot. I wanted to have all our networking issues sorted out, be able to download code to the robot, run the code in the Wind River debugger and connect to VxWorks via a command shell. Tonight, we passed all of those tests and have started mounting components to the Plexiglas.
Tomorrow we will continue to mount components and probably look more at creating code for our different modes. We'll be looking at the code the controls the robot autonomously and also the code that will be used during tele-operated mode.
I feel that we are now making good progress, and hopefully we will have a drivable robot next week.
I set out a few goals to meet before we started moving the components onto the Plexiglas sheet that will be mounted in the robot. I wanted to have all our networking issues sorted out, be able to download code to the robot, run the code in the Wind River debugger and connect to VxWorks via a command shell. Tonight, we passed all of those tests and have started mounting components to the Plexiglas.
Tomorrow we will continue to mount components and probably look more at creating code for our different modes. We'll be looking at the code the controls the robot autonomously and also the code that will be used during tele-operated mode.
I feel that we are now making good progress, and hopefully we will have a drivable robot next week.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Smile for the Camera
Tonight I figured out that the 802.11n wireless adapter I bought for my laptop only works on the 2.4 GHz band, and FIRST wants our routers set to only broadcast N on the 5 GHz band.... Bummer! Now I've gotta take my cheappy <cough>Belkin</cough> card back to Best Buy. However I did just find a dual band LinkSys card on sale at Office Max. Can you guess where I'm going tomorrow?
Our goal tonight was to get the camera working, and possibly learn more about the debugging capabilities of Wind River. We did learn a little more about debugging, but we spent most of our 3 hours re-configuring our camera. It was thought that someone may have reconfigured the IP address of the camera and our controller wasn't able to connect to it. I'm not sure what we did for quite some time; we swapped network cables, connected the camera to just about everything (except the kitchen sink), and power cycled the cRIO about 100 times (seriously). As our group got more frustrated with the camera, it was decided that we needed to re-image the cRIO. We updated the firmware in it a few weeks ago, but the thought was that we may have somehow corrupted it. Personally I don't think this was the problem but we'll have to find out tomorrow. In fact the re-image was the absolute last thing we could do before being evicted for the night from our workspace.
Hopefully tomorrow we'll have the camera working and I should be able to connect to our robot's network wirelessly with a new network adapter. :)
Our goal tonight was to get the camera working, and possibly learn more about the debugging capabilities of Wind River. We did learn a little more about debugging, but we spent most of our 3 hours re-configuring our camera. It was thought that someone may have reconfigured the IP address of the camera and our controller wasn't able to connect to it. I'm not sure what we did for quite some time; we swapped network cables, connected the camera to just about everything (except the kitchen sink), and power cycled the cRIO about 100 times (seriously). As our group got more frustrated with the camera, it was decided that we needed to re-image the cRIO. We updated the firmware in it a few weeks ago, but the thought was that we may have somehow corrupted it. Personally I don't think this was the problem but we'll have to find out tomorrow. In fact the re-image was the absolute last thing we could do before being evicted for the night from our workspace.
Hopefully tomorrow we'll have the camera working and I should be able to connect to our robot's network wirelessly with a new network adapter. :)
Friday, January 9, 2009
Debuging
Just a quick post since it's getting late.
Tonight we met again and we had some success running the debugger, but it didn't come till clean up time. We really weren't able to learn anything by running it yet, however we've cleared this hurdle.
I tried connecting to our 802.11n network with a new network adapter, and didn't have any luck. As it turns out I may have needed an update to the driver, which I did when I got home.
It's kinda funny.... we're working on a high tech project in a pre-college building at a local high school, and we are not allowed to access the Internet...
It's really tough to make progress, because the answers to ALL OF OUR QUESTIONS are on the Internet and we are not allowed to go there....
Tonight we met again and we had some success running the debugger, but it didn't come till clean up time. We really weren't able to learn anything by running it yet, however we've cleared this hurdle.
I tried connecting to our 802.11n network with a new network adapter, and didn't have any luck. As it turns out I may have needed an update to the driver, which I did when I got home.
It's kinda funny.... we're working on a high tech project in a pre-college building at a local high school, and we are not allowed to access the Internet...
It's really tough to make progress, because the answers to ALL OF OUR QUESTIONS are on the Internet and we are not allowed to go there....
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