First Tech Challenge Team 7621

First Tech Challenge team from Dowling Catholic High School

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Just went 5-0 for the league meet today! Next week we have another! ROBOTS!

[rookiemag]

Around the Clock

An all-nighter survival guide.

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Could be renamed: How to get ready for FTC

[team5163]

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Friend: I can't believe it's already December. It's almost time for the holid-

FRC Kid: Kickoff!

Friend: Wha-?

FRC Students Chanting in Unison: Kickoff kickoff kickoff kickoff!

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Me on a date: So do you like robots?

Them: They're just a bunch of metal and wiring. I find them boring.

Me, shoving breadsticks into my purse: sorry but I have to go home right now immediately

[thethingaboutprogramming]

The thing about programming is that there are never enough parentheses.

(via thethingaboutprogramming)

[aquamorph]

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Here’s something that may be a bit more useful. I wrote here a mock code of how to get onto the ramp in the autonomous mode. 

Read through this and I’m sure you can decipher whats going on.

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Here is a second Autonomous. This one will go forward, stop, wait, come back, and stop.

This is the true advantage to using those procedures. They keep the code readable and recognizable throughout.

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Now it all comes together. Using your procedures that you defined earlier, you can combine them in this fashion and have this code. When you run this on your robot, it will move forward for one second and then stop. Congratulations, you have an Autonomous code.

This is basic, lets try some more.

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Now this is how your code is going to all come together. Under the “FtcLinearOpMode1″ there is a timing block that sets a program to “sleep” for a set amount of time. This block is how everything is going to actually move.

Note that it is set in milliseconds. 1000 milliseconds = 1 second, so this block will set it to sleep for 1 second.

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This is setting up the procedures for the continuous rotation servo. While typically I wouldn't define a procedure to set up a servo, since the servos are really just light weight motors in this case, I do it here anyway. 

Notice that to go one way the servo is set to 1, to go the other, 0, and, to stop, 0.5

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Now we are gonna look at the continuous rotation servo. I would not define anything for a regular servo, that would simply add excess blocks to the code.

I also defined a “Stop” procedure to halt the motors. I like to think that it keeps robot movement cleaner and more precise, but at least it looks better.

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This is simply finishing out the procedures in the same manner as the “Forward” procedure. For the turns, I set it up so that it will turn in place by running one motor forward and the other backward.

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Here I define the first procedure. I drag in each of the motor power blocks and set them as 1 and negative 1. They are set to opposite because, remember, one of your motors is, technically, upside-down. I have randomly decided that this configuration will be forward, it may take some testing on your bot to be sure which one to set as the positive or negative.

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Now we are onto blocks. First, drag out “RunOpMode” from your “FtcLinearOpMode1.” Immediately thereafter, drag out from “FtcLinearOpMode1” the “WaitForStart” block. This is crucial. Otherwise your robot will start on the Initialization button, not the start.

Next is a personal preference of mine. 

These are procedures.they are similar to the “Advanced Sub VI” from LabView and run a set of code when called. We are going to use them to set up out motors.

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This is the First Step for your Robot Controller.

Drag in all of these components. They are all the same name in my picture as they are dragged in to be with the exception of FtcServoCont1 - That is just renaming the FtcServo1 so I can easily demonstrate how to make a continuous rotation servo run.