Texas Instruments MSP430 Launchpad (2015) Source: Game console retailers like Best Buy, GameStop, Target, Walmart Usually, that means starting with ports connected to bigger drain USB hubs that have several devices hanging off them, or LED heavy game controllers.
When the driver station is running on laptop battery it begins to cut power to USB ports starting with the ports with the highest power drain. Basic controllers connected directly to the laptop USB ports with power saving turned off are safest. Warning: power hungry controllers and loaded down USB hubs may brown out during competition. This can inadvertently lead to a mysterious loss of control if the driver hits the button/switch accidentally.Ĭontrollers without such a switch are more foolproof to use. Note: Some game controllers (like the F310 above) have mode buttons and switches that change how the buttons and axes are mapped. Non-game controllers such as keypads are not recognized by the Driver station application.
It just has to be recognizable by the Windows OS with an appropriate hardware driver on the Driver Station laptop as a game controller. To control the robot the Kit of Parts includes the classic Attack3 Joystick and others through FIRST Choice or the physical kit.Īny USB wired game controller can be used, such as Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 USB compatible game controllers. (click on game controllers for 2015 FRC mapping of buttons & axes) Logitech F310 (mapping changes for a Dual Action/xBox Emulator switch on bottom and for a Sports mode switch on top) Uncheck the check box next to "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".Right-click each entry and select "Properties".Win 8, hold the Windows key and press the 'x' key to open a menu in the lower-left and select "Device Manager." Using Win 7, open the Start Menu, type "Device Manager" in the search field, and click it.
The same as for USB, set the Ethernet port power saver settings to avoid power cutbacks.Power hungry fancy sticks or ones with glittery LEDs require more power and won't fare as well as plain vanilla generic joysticks when a brown-out occurs. Avoid complicated joysticks that draw an excess of USB power.Bigger hubs are worse, because larger hubs and more devices require more power and USB has a 500mA limit. Avoid ganging multiple USB devices up on a single USB hub.Keep critical joysticks on their own USB port. If using more than one USB device, i.e., multiple joysticks, distribute the USB load across all the laptop USB ports that you have.Choose "USB Settings" -> "USB selective suspend setting".Choose "Change advanced power settings".(Note: this means you have to be really conscientious about keeping the laptop plugged in at ALL times (Pit, Queue, Field). Select "Never" for everything if you know what's good for you (okay this isn't a USB thing, but hey).For your current Power Plan choose "Change Plan Settings".
A LabVIEW default program download takes 25 sec., but Building it still takes just as long and you want a good computer to run LabVIEW (the default code takes 1 min to build on an i3, but 7 min to compile on a Classmate Atom).A roboRIO Reset takes ~6 sec (restarts just the user code).A roboRIO boot or cold start takes 20 to 30 sec.The FPGA runs at 40MHz (sampling at 25ns).The roboRIO is between 4x and 10x faster than the old cRIO depending on operation.roboRIO Specification Flyer (August 2013).Note: a higher resolution poster-sized layout schematic is Fall 2014 Beta Presentation 2015 v2.ppt - Workshop presentation on the then new 2015 system.Fall 2014 Beta Testing the New 2015 Control System - A summation of what we've learned from our Fall 2014 testing, some videos demonstrating test results, photos of components/students/setups/test instrumentation/etc.
For LabVIEW programmers here are how to do some common LabVIEW robot operations