One of the hardest things to do to create an autonomous routine is capturing the moves. Most of the time it’s trial and error creating an outline of the code and filling in distances and degree turns. You can measure distances to help, but the turns are a problem. Along with lifting arms in the right locations.
This process was developed by Turbodog and announced on the the VEXIQ forum. The setup gives you the ability to make 1″ moves forward and backwards and to turn 5 or 10 degrees to the right and left. By keeping track of the moves, you can piece together the full routine.
This method assumes that you are using the Modkit setup either on a PC or iPad
You need to configure your robot, in the example assume the drive base and two motors lifting the arm.
1) Change the drive train settings for your wheel types, track width (how far apart the wheels are side to side) and the wheelbase (how far apart are the wheels from front to back)
2) In the brain section you are going to write
when Start
do forever
clearLCD
newline
print “Left/right motor degree”
print (armleft) rotation in (deg)
print ( ) // this is a few space characters to space the numbers out
print (armleft) rotation in (deg)
end forever
3) In the controller blocks you want to put a series of these:
when controller-button-E up-pressed
broadcast forward1
when controller-button-E down-pressed
broadcast backward1
when controller-button-L up-pressed
broadcast left10
when controller-button-L down-pressed
broadcast left5
when controller-button-R up-pressed
broadcast right10
when controller-button-R down-pressed
broadcast right5
when controller-button-F up-pressed
broadcast armup
when controller-button-F down-pressed
broadcast armdown
when controller-button-F up-released
broadcast armstop
when controller-button-F down-released
broadcast armstop
4) And then in the motor for the arm you need to add
when start
set holding to on
set velocity to 50%
when armup
spin FWD
when armdown
spin REV
when armstop
stop
5) finally in the drive base motors
when start
set drive speed to 50%
set turn speed to 50%
when forward1
drive FWD 1 in
when backward1
drive REV 1 in
when left5
turn LEFT 5 deg
when left10
turn LEFT 10 deg
when right5
turn RIGHT 5 deg
when right10
turn RIGHT 10 deg
when drivestop
stop
You can now run the robot, single steps at a time to move forward, backwards, turn left and right. As you position the arm you can read the angles off of the display on the back. You need to remember as you start each run to make sure the arm is in the same starting position.
When you convert to the final routine you can add things together. So you can move 8″ vs making eight 1″ movements.
Link to a video tutorial
Good luck!!