I am pretty new to the Vex Coding Studio IDE and coding a robot in general. I have a bit of background when it comes to using Java with the Eclipse IDE, but this is vastly different. My general question would be a quick overview of how it works. A link to a source with that kind of info would be helpful. A more specific question for what I’m trying to figure out now would be what ‘tasks’ I need to do in the pre-auton and auton code and maybe a little advice on how to do it. Thank you to all who respond :).
First of all, before getting too far into VEX Coding Studio, I would advise you to take a look at Robot Mesh Studio (especially the C++ option). VCS is still full of bugs, while RMS seems far more polished and usable in general.
More information about Robot Mesh Studio, its offline/desktop version, and its CLI (mentioned by @sazrocks below) is available in this thread:
Another benefit of RMS (or PROS) is that they both have CLIs, and you can therefore use any IDE that you wish with them.
The main 3 different ‘sections’ of code (pre-autonomous, autonomous, driver control) and their uses are, within reason, fundamentally the same in all competition-ready programming options for VRC.
- Pre-autonomous, or initialization, takes place first. Don’t plan on reading controller data or running motors here, but you can do things like an LCD- or sensor-based autonomous routine chooser.
- Autonomous contains the code that will run during the 15-second first part of matches. Controller data is unavailable; you must rely on sensors for input. At the end of your autonomous code, be sure to stop all your motors (good practice).
- Driver control contains the code that will run during the remaining 1 minute and 45 seconds of the match. You must ensure your driver control code never exits; this is usually implemented by an infinite
while()
loop. All inputs, controller and sensor, are available. Be wary of any delays/pauses within your driver control code aside from a single, necessary short (20ms) delay – these will make your robot seem unresponsive and laggy.
@Barin
Thanks for the replies! I didn’t expect to get replies so quickly! As per your reply, I’ll check out RMS when I have the time, but since I am working on a school computer at the moment I don’t think I’ll be able to use it until it’s approved by my district and goes through the whole process. On a side note, can you transfer the files easily enough between the two software? Are there any specific steps needed for going through that process? Also, thanks for the advice on the actual pieces of code I need to write. Your reply gave a bit more of a grasp on the concept of autonomous coding and all that jazz. Thanks!
RMS is browser based - although there is a plugin to install. You can easily go from computer to computer because you just login and you get all your code.
@Nathan Our primary product (for VEX) is browser based at https://www.robotmesh.com/studio. Usually just pulling it up won’t require too much approval from your school. Use Chrome if it’s available, as it has the best support for the browser features we use at the moment. Often you can add a plugin to a browser even if you don’t have rights to install standalone software.