It seems that we have lots of people in Robotics, right now. Specifically, Rascherite, Rhombus, and myself. Tomorrow is the FRC Kickoff day! What will people be doing? And, maybe if some of us are close, we can run and say hi Smile I'll be in the West Knoxville, TN at some hotel that decided to host us Razz
I will be going to our workshop to start working on prototype ideas. Some of my team will be going to the kickoff event at NC State.

We have a pretty sick prototype chassis that if at all possible we will be building off this year. I will probably be at the shop for a while tonight finishing up a few things on our eclectic board and code from last years bot so it will run again(we got damaged last year to the point where the chassis would start falling apart when we tried to run it, ie wheels falling off ect LOL) (we also blew up a victor last night but it amazingly still works)
that's about 0x1F0 miles from where I am Sad

I'm gonna be at Kettering university (in flint, michigan) for the kickoff.
What team is everybody on? I'm on 2337, the enginerds.

AHHH!!! we need to have a Cemetechnician meetup at nationals this year!!
Oh, that reminds me. I've heard that this year, the extra challenge is that we'll have to use Kinects for "vision" on the robot (And, they'll be supplying them). Not sure if that is true, but a couple of my friends have seen it on the main FIRST guy's blog. And, we recently built a T-Shirt cannon that we should be able to at least take the base from to use for the real deal (But we might just start from scratch, idk. First year of Robotics Smile). Unfortunately, our robot's code is written in LabView, so I'll be trying my hardest to get to work in Java or C++.
_player1537:
It is true, we're getting kinects. But it's not going to be ON the robot as a sensor, rather it's another controller for the players to use, as far as I know. It was on the official KOP, so it's definitely happening.
Rascherite wrote:
that's about 0x1F0 miles from where I am Sad

I'm gonna be at Kettering university (in flint, michigan) for the kickoff.
What team is everybody on? I'm on 2337, the enginerds.

AHHH!!! we need to have a Cemetechnician meetup at nationals this year!!


two years ago i was on 3196 team spork. last year and this year im on 3540 Wildcat Robotics

Quote:

Oh, that reminds me. I've heard that this year, the extra challenge is that we'll have to use Kinects for "vision" on the robot (And, they'll be supplying them). Not sure if that is true, but a couple of my friends have seen it on the main FIRST guy's blog. And, we recently built a T-Shirt cannon that we should be able to at least take the base from to use for the real deal (But we might just start from scratch, idk. First year of Robotics Smile). Unfortunately, our robot's code is written in LabView, so I'll be trying my hardest to get to work in Java or C++.


Yea from what ive heard about the kenects is that we will be able to use them for controlling the robot or use them as sensors on the robot itself.

Also, tanner you will love it, its a lot of fun
I thought it was for player control at first, but for some reason, I then thought it was to be on the robot, so you could scan for oncoming obstacles. My team is 3140 (With a name that I don't know). And we definitely need to get together if/when we get to Nationals Smile

Edit: *Catherine Smile
oh i forgot to mention that we used java for coding our robot last year. we used labview on 3196 and im so glad i took over programing on the new team so i could switch
_player1537 wrote:
It seems that we have lots of people in Robotics, right now. Specifically, Rascherite, Rhombus, and myself. Tomorrow is the FRC Kickoff day! What will people be doing? And, maybe if some of us are close, we can run and say hi Smile I'll be in the West Knoxville, TN at some hotel that decided to host us Razz


I'm not part of this list? Sad

I'm the head programmer on my FRC team, and a "mock" mentor for the FTC ones (basically, I tell them what the word "Integer" means, and then do my own programming stuff). My team is having a kickoff banquet tomorrow, but I'll most likely not go, as my fellow team members of another programming contest (idtus.com's AST High School contest) and I are going to finals to be judged on our product; I may come around there for information on the event this year. Just to throw random stuff out there, we're 50-50 on which language to use this year for programming the robot -- and since my vote is worth a lot, I have to actually really consider it (Java vs. C++ -- in my mind, both are messy and suck.)

Cool to see others here participating! Smile

EDIT: The location: Washington DC area.
Ah, but of course! I knew I had forgotten someone Smile Which one is FTC? Also, I'd probably go for Java, because as messy as it is, it's probably not as messy as C++ (And, if you had to teach the rest of the team, Java would probably be easier).
_player1537 wrote:
Ah, but of course! I knew I had forgotten someone Smile Which one is FTC? Also, I'd probably go for Java, because as messy as it is, it's probably not as messy as C++ (And, if you had to teach the rest of the team, Java would probably be easier).


FTC == "First Tech Challenge" -- it's basically the the "Junior Varsity" version of the bigger FRC challenge; the robots are a lot smaller, and programming is very simply (100 lines of C/one page of Labview code is generally enough to make a decent autonomous/teleop setup)

Also, good point -- Plus, we already have many years of cumulative Java code in the making; it's what I'm after. It's just the mentors want to meddle and throw the idea of C++ in there as well. Rolling Eyes
Lucky :/ Our mentors want to throw the idea of LabView around, no matter how many times I say that it is awful. I think tomorrow, I'll have to really push to get us to change the robot code around, but since I'm not the head programmer (co- since this is my first year DSmile then I don't know how much say I'll have. Perhaps the head (a pretty good friend who knows that I'm better at programming than him) will actually let us change, but then he wouldn't be the head any more Razz
We have a KOP chassis and electronics on a board and we duct taped a chair on the top and we are currently riding it around the shop xD
This is my school's first year to do FIRST. I'm pretty excited for the kickoff tomorrow as well!

Oh, and I'm on Team 4237, "Sir Lancer-A-Bot," which is a pretty epic name considering my school's mascot is a Lancer.
ztrumpet wrote:
This is my school's first year to do FIRST. I'm pretty excited for the kickoff tomorrow as well!

Oh, and I'm on Team 4237, "Sir Lancer-A-Bot," which is a pretty epic name considering my school's mascot is a Lancer.


More creative than my team. "Cougar Robotics". We're the Oakton Cougars.
ztrumpet wrote:
This is my school's first year to do FIRST. I'm pretty excited for the kickoff tomorrow as well!

Oh, and I'm on Team 4237, "Sir Lancer-A-Bot," which is a pretty epic name considering my school's mascot is a Lancer.


I'm probably gonna see you at the ann arbor competition, then!! That's awesome!

_player1537 wrote:
Lucky :/ Our mentors want to throw the idea of LabView around, no matter how many times I say that it is awful. I think tomorrow, I'll have to really push to get us to change the robot code around, but since I'm not the head programmer (co- since this is my first year D then I don't know how much say I'll have. Perhaps the head (a pretty good friend who knows that I'm better at programming than him) will actually let us change, but then he wouldn't be the head any more


As bad as LabVIEW looks to us more experienced programmers, I would recommend using it for an FRC robot. FRC is all about introducing people the the fun of engineering. A couple I know who have turned out as really good programmers would not be involved in programming had their teams not used LabVIEW. Unlike text-based languages like C++ and Java, LabVIEW has almost no learning curve and no syntax to mess up. It's easy to captivate impatient freshmen and sophomores with it because they can write a teleop all by themselves that actually works, even if they're laymen. In C++/Java, that would take a few weeks of experience for a PATIENT student, let alone an impatient underclassman!

Anyways, for a graphic language, LabVIEW is quite full-featured. Sure, it's not as "hard-core" as C++, but it's as flexible as you need it to be to create robot code for a high school robotics competition on the crio.
Quote:
_player1537 wrote:
Lucky :/ Our mentors want to throw the idea of LabView around, no matter how many times I say that it is awful. I think tomorrow, I'll have to really push to get us to change the robot code around, but since I'm not the head programmer (co- since this is my first year D then I don't know how much say I'll have. Perhaps the head (a pretty good friend who knows that I'm better at programming than him) will actually let us change, but then he wouldn't be the head any more


As bad as LabVIEW looks to us more experienced programmers, I would recommend using it for an FRC robot. FRC is all about introducing people the the fun of engineering. A couple I know who have turned out as really good programmers would not be involved in programming had their teams not used LabVIEW. Unlike text-based languages like C++ and Java, LabVIEW has almost no learning curve and no syntax to mess up. It's easy to captivate impatient freshmen and sophomores with it because they can write a teleop all by themselves that actually works, even if they're laymen. In C++/Java, that would take a few weeks of experience for a PATIENT student, let alone an impatient underclassman!


Anyways, for a graphic language, LabVIEW is quite full-featured. Sure, it's not as "hard-core" as C++, but it's as flexible as you need it to be to create robot code for a high school robotics competition on the crio.
[/quote]
As much as I dislike labveiw I agree with thus, unless you already have experianced c++. Or java coders then you should have already been learning the other languages in the off season
Rhombus P. wrote:
As much as I dislike labveiw I agree with this, unless you already have experienced c++. Or java coders then you should have already been learning the other languages in the off season


If we have enough programmers next year, I might convince our mentors to get the underclassmen and the experienced programmers to write separate versions of the robot code. The experienced programmers would be responsible for the actual competition robot code (in C++), and the rookies would write their own project in LabVIEW.
I don't know if this is the best idea, though, for those rookie programmers, nothing is cooler than to see their own code running on the robot that's competing. That's what got me hooked my sophomore year.
Well, the one thing about LabVIEW that gets me (besides the 2D programming style -- can get *VERY* messy if done by unorganized person), is that the compiler/interpreted code (I'm not sure which one it really is) running on the cRIO is *really* slow compared to the others. For non-programmers though, it is nice it exists, it still allows newbie to create a decent Autonomous/Teleop system Smile
Ashbad wrote:
besides the 2D programming style -- can get *VERY* messy if done by unorganized person

I could write a BOOK about how much I hate this facet of LabVIEW!! Last year, I was the head programmer, and the only other programmer on our team, a senior was terribly disorganized. I remember on one occasion, I spent almost 2.5 hours straightening out wires in his code!!! It was TERRIBLE!!
  
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