Tip Jar #9 - Making Friends with the FRC Advanced Robot Framework

Updated 2010 FRC Videos Now Online:

This Blog entry is the fifth in a series intended primarily for FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams and their mentors.

This entry is intended to explain the Advanced FRC Robot Framework.

In a nutshell, I DO recommend that teams use the Advanced Robot Framework, as I explain in the video, for these main reasons:
More robust, larger code can be more easily developed and maintained
Code is more easily encapsulated, making it easier for multiple programmers to work in parallel
Code screen size doesn't grow without bound, making debugging and programming easier
The use of typedefs help maintain a consistency between the autonomous and teleop code

In this blog entry, I touch on:
A tour of the project structure and Robot Main.vi in the Advanced Framework
An explanation of clusters, and getting data into and out of them
How typedefs are used in the framework, and how to modify them
How shift registers are used to store data in loops
How to add additional state or robot data to the typedefs for advanced robot code
Using the "init" case of the Teleop code to open references to devices
The two different types of autonomous mode: independent and iterative, and recommendations on which to use
Some of the intricacies of sending data between autonomous and tele-operated modes

Again, I ask that all those LabVIEW experts out there, please get out there and mentor a team near you! You will be surprised and motivated by their ability to learn LabVIEW and impress you.

Please! If you like (or hate) what you saw, please leave a comment by clicking here.

Also, don't forget to check out the rest of the series by clicking on the left side of the page.

Ben Zimmer
-- LV Mastery Team

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