Vision Assistant

Where is the newest Vision Assistant? The one I found was 2009 and I don't think it was installed correctly and if we're using convex hull for camera tracking we'll need to use Vision assistant.

The Vision Assistant should be under the "Robotics 2012\Programs" directory. Whichever version is there is the one that needs to be used. I came in briefly after your shift, so if you were wondering why it wasn't working, it's because the laptop wasn't configured to communicate with the cRIO. I remember explaining the IP settings both on this forum and in person, so you should have been able to fix it, but at any rate, that's why it wasn't working.

If, instead, you tried using the DriverStation to perform the Vision Assistant operations (which is also possible, because there is an "Exit" button under the driver program that lets you switch to developer mode and access other programs), it should have also had the most recent version, and it should have worked regarldless. However, in that particular case, I am definitely a little less certain that the correct programs were available.

Anyway, I definitely suggest that someone look at the Vision Assistant to see if it can do anything useful. The goals for this weekend are to make measurable progress with processing the camera image, and to have an autonomous mode made that uses the gyro. In the case of the autonomous mode, all the robot needs to be able to do is to drive straight and correct its path using the gyro's angle. Note that I inserted a good value for the gyro as a macro ("GYROSENSITIVITY" I believe) that I researched as being a reasonable sensitivity to set, if you want to try it. Otherwise, the code to retrieve the gyro angle is already there, so it shouldn't be hard to write the autonomous in the right section. I think I'll leave that to my diminished shift on Sunday, because, again, I won't be there.

Some tips for the autonomous for those on Sunday (Saturday will be dedicated to the camera and other small issues and lessons): use tank steering--alter the speed of the drive motors to try to turn instead of using the steering motors; the gyro angle is returned in degrees, positive in one direction and negative in another; keep things neat, commented, and backed-up; and don't forget to use good form, indentation, macros, and variable-naming

Finally, if said tank-mode corrections are not sufficient to produce straight-line driving, and other factors have been ruled out, it will be necessary to steer the front set of wheels in order to correct instead. I will divulge the details of this to my team tomorrow, and I think Stuart has volunteered to fill in for me, so that should definitely be finished by the end of Sunday--on top of, hopefully, functional camera-image processing.

Oh, and if any significant code changes are made, don't forget to post the updated version on the forum under the Code Samples board (or whatever I called it; I can't remember). This, of course, is in addition to the usual backups

Here's a joke to help you remember and relieve the stress of our dwindling time:
Why is Jesus a better programmer than Satan? Because Jesus saves