Electrical & Code 2019
Students
Mentors
Date & Time
Location & Author
Shashank H.
Adam P.
Aquiferland
Bryn G.
Work Completed
- Malia and Caden worked on the schematics training and got through half of it. They are going to finish it on next Monday (Jan 21st)
- They will begin making a schematic of our electrical system!!!
- Figured out that we need 2 more Gray Hill encoders and 1 more FRC Gyro & Accel for the two drivetrains
- Can not find FRC Gyro & Accel for purchase that is not on the First Choice by Andymark...
- Helped climber subteam test their prototype using Poly's shooter wheel motor controller
- Tested it by changing the RPM value on Smart Dashboard
- See #1 in work for next meeting to help them tomorrow
- Adam tried another method of updating firmward on Quee Queg Jr. (RoboRIO). It also failed. He'll call NI Support again tomorrow.
Challenges
- At first, Malia and Caden struggled with the schematics, but now they understand the program more.
- Testing the climber on poly had some difficulties since none of us knew much about Poly's code and control's system until Nolan came and helped
Work for Next Meeting
- Help Climber subteam finish testing their prototype
- Finish the extension CAN cables on the Talon SRX that was originally from Poly's shooter wheel motor (requires soldering)
- Figure out what value the encoder is giving us on the Smart Dashboard (probably talk to Adam about this)
- Is it the value without taking into account the gear ratios?
- Does it use the shooter's specific gear ratio?
- Change the encoder numbers to consider the gear ratio of the climber gearbox so that we can get the climber to go at an exact RPM (or make a new PID loop and tune it to for the new gear ratio)
- Put connectors on the new battery that is sitting on the shelves in a small white box --> get help on this!!!
- Make list of all the general electrical components on the robot (FRC4096 --> 2018 - 2019 --> Build Season --> Electrical folder --> Electrical components)
- Build a set-up to run a motor when testing and making prototypes [ <-- hold off on this, we ordered a motor tester - Adam ]
- Zach suggests using a three way switch (on forwards, off, on reverse)
- One side, the motor is plugged in (two smaller anderson connectors)
- A battery is plugged into the other side (large anderson connector on the battery)
- Drivetrain Code
- Continue working on robot.py, const.py, and oi.py
- Begin commands/drivetrain.py & subsystems/drivetrain.py
- Goal is to be done by early next week when the drivetrain is supposed to be done
- Vision
- Drive robot towards vision target so the target is in view of limelight; then have robot drive to a specified distance and turn to a specified angle from the vision target (using a calibrated position and the tx & ty from the limelight)
- Get Rotate_To_Angle_Limelight command working on Atlaz. PID will need tuning.
- Continue learning how to use limelight
- Specifically learn what all of the different values on the network table are and how they can be used
- Continue to look into the Limelight documentations
- Go to specified range from target (check case studies on limelight website & documentation)
- Go to specified range and aim at target (again check case studies)
- Line Following (Ordered set of 3 line trackers from Vex, wait for those to arrive before resuming this work. -Adam)
- Mount the color sensor to Atlaz. Needs to be only a few centimeters away from floor, pointed at the carpet.
- Determine what sensor object to use in code to get values from it. It's an I2C device.
- Would be used to follow the white tape that is centered coming out from the spots where hatch panels are placed
- Ultimate question is - Should line following be used instead of limelight vision in some places? Together with limelight vision? Or not at all this year?
- Talk to other subteams and drivers to determine what semi-autonomous controls are desired --> need list of everything we wish to accomplish and order of priorities --> this has been started, but more work is definitely needed
- Will need to finalize these after designs are finalized but should start to get an idea now
- Then figure out what the best ways are to implement them
- Encoders? Gyros? Limit Switches? Vision? Line Following? etc. etc.