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Page that speaks about a programming method. The best feature of this method is that the design supports having the robot doing multiple things at once. Should be a big help in our performance at the challenges. What is Command based programming? WPILib supports a method of writing programs called "Command based programming". Command based programming is a design pattern to help you organize your robot programs. Some of the characteristics of robot programs that might be different from other desktop programs are: Activities happen over time, for example a sequence of steps to shoot a Frisbee or raise an elevator and place a tube on a goal. These activities occur concurrently, that is it might be desirable for an elevator, wrist and gripper to all be moving into a pickup position at the same time to increase robot performance. It is desirable to test the robot mechanisms and activities each individually to help debug your robot. Often the program needs to be augmented with additional autonomous programs at the last minute, perhaps at competitions, so easily extendable code is important. Command based programming supports all these goals easily to make the robot program much simpler than using some less structured technique.

Main entry page to the 2013 Robot Builder Java code generator. We get this tool as part of the Java programming interface to the robot controller. It is graphical code generator written in Java. It will automatically create all the basic java classes and methods that you can edit to create the robot program. It also has built in code for doing the download to the robot. So when you run the code in the Netbean's IDE it will compile and upload the result to the robot. Very cool.

Low level programming interface to robot hardware. This page references the classes that we are going to need to control all the sensors, actuators, driver station, and event interface. It will show you how to access all the hardware items on the robot.

This is a very informative page on the FRC website. It list everything that you will need to know to build our robot. A must read for all team members.

Autodesk is a big supporter lf first(FRC). They are a diamond member. ie 200k to 500k per year. They offer free CAD design software for the students. Be sure to watch the main video. It shows one of the guys from MythBusters showing how CAD works for designing our robot. This page also has links to other important resources. Go to this page and create an account. With this account you will be able to access the Autodesk 360 cloud services. With these services we can share our design and collaborate with other people using tablets, browsers, cell phones, etc.

Nice series of videos showing you how to get started using the robot builder Java Code Generator

Provider of drive belts. This page has a form on it that will help you calculate belt length, center distance, and speed ratios. Gates is a major sponsor of the First(FRC) robotic challenges.

Spokane company that has created some robot systems.

The 2013 PDF Team Handbook. This document talks about the ins and outs of the First FRC robotics challenge. A must read for all participates.

Series of YouTube videos created by other students on how to use Autodesk Inventor for creating robot parts.

Series of videos showing how to program the robot using the labview programming language.

Operating Instructions and Specification for the cROI-FRC II PDF Document. This PDF shows the basic information for the robot controller.

Search result showing all the references to the different documents available at NI for the controller in our test robot.

This is the E12 Classmate PC page. I think that this is the controller PC that will be used to connect the competition network and used to control our robot. I think that the joy sticks and other control inputs connect to this PC. I am still not sure and this could be all wrong

Lots of small parts that we might be able to use in our robot

AndyMark website for robot parts

Reference guide to using the CAN interface Jaguar motor controller to connect an encoder of pot to get speed or position control, PID, directly to the motor. This could greatly simplify PID controlled devices on the robot.

Yeah we have been collecting these and have maybe 4. These will be excellent for the PID control of a mechanism. Excellent reference material.

Motor Controller from vexpro. This is the CAN interface controller with the ability to attach an encoder, POT, and/or limit switches directly to the motor controller. This controller would give us the ability to do direct PID control of a robot mechanism. Should simplify the software and should be very fast. It would also make the wiring much cleaner and easier to trouble shoot.

Lots of Colson wheels that we may use all over the place