New Member

We will be having Mr. Sweeney joining us with the programming. I am giving him the crash course for EasyCPro, not sure how good of a teacher I am but we will see how well he does.

Programming Log

What I worked on tonight was more of the skeleton code to use. I have a lot down but it needs lots of fine tuning with the gyros and all the other sensors. It is currently using a timer for all the calculations. I put in a basic code for the actual player commanding the robot during the noraml operation phase.

Work Days

Monday-Off
Tuesday-Off
Wednesday-Off
Thursday-Off
------------------>Work week cut off. Old week ends, new one begins.
Friday-Work
I will post next week as soon as I get it

How NOT to program

Good guide on how NOT to program. Useful :)

RobotC IDE for 2008 competition

ROBOTC for IFI is available for use in the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). ROBOTC for IFI is a C-based cross-platform programming language developed at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy for use on the IFI-FRC controller.

http://www.robotc.net/ifi/frc/

Need to download, installa and try!

2008 Game Strategy

For autonomous mode, our strategy depends on what we do best (we'll find it out in experiments once the robot can track the game ball and move around the field).

Some thoughts:

1. The playing field is quite large, even if the robot moves close to the inner barrier, it is still 30 feet in one dimension. 15 seconds is short time, so I doubt the robot can get a lot of points moving quickly around the field. Probably better strategy is to cross 1-2 lines, get the ball and prepare for the controlled mode.
2. 
   

CMUcam2 Vision Sensor

Good self-contained module, $200, user guide here (pdf)

Need to get a new module or find if previous camera can be still found. Experiments:

1. detect red game ball
2. track red game ball moving horizontally across the camera's field of view
   
3. connect camera servo controllers (built-in), so that the camera can tilt up and down.
4. track red game ball moving from floor level to straight above the robot

Ok, ordered the sensor from Acroname Robotics
Total price with UPS Ground delivery $208

Ok, got the camera and gave it to Andrew. Tested the camera with the included Java GUI application - connected the camera through the serial port, the picture goes through, can pick color and can track the middle of the region. I made a backup copy of the software on my laptop.