Just received our first GPS sensor. Unfortunately, its not a plug and play and learn type of sensor. As learning new toys always been fun, this sensor programming needs a bit more explanation of the programming side. It would be great to see more examples and a series of tangent gps examples to show students how to combine codes. If anybody have any success with some basic usage of the gps sensor and like to share their success it would be highly appreciated.
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Not sure what programming platform you’re using, but this guide is pretty good:
https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/v5/tutorials/topical/gps.html
The VEX knowledge base article on the GPS lists pretty much everything you need to know in order to get started with the GPS sensor:
https://kb.vex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360061932711-Using-the-V5-GPS-Sensor
I think you might be misunderstanding the GPS sensor. It is not a “toy”. Rather, it is an advanced sensor that provides advanced information (absolute position and heading) in an unprecedentedly plug and play package. VEX has even provided examples on how to use the GPS sensor to do things like drive to a specific location. Combining the information in the VEX KB article with that found in the PROS tutorial @RanchSauce posted, students should have all the information they need to start using the GPS.
We are still using blocks to get middle school age kids understanding basic commands. We have used text before but found it was difficult to get majority of the students seeing the slight differences in syntax or spelling makes a huge difference. Thank you for the resource for pro tho.
Thank you for the reply. I just used the word toy as it shiny and new. We have used the examples to start things off and it mostly worked. (used tangent commands with specific end coordinates but after running the program it stops well short of the end point). I wish vexcode had a bit more comment block explaining some meaning of specific blocks which may not be obvious to non coders.
The built-in help (click the question mark button in the top right, then click any block) has a pretty good description of what each block does.
Thank you! Find that block most recently most diffidently a hidden gem.
So students are playing with tangent sample problem and only changing the end points to a new location and running it on the field. We notice time after time its stopping well short of the location. We tried different locations and hitting the same issues. I’m not sure if we have a weird camera; I did use the gps to locate specific points on the field so I know at least that works. Again, I think its the programming I wish there was more examples we can play around with. The other sample programs run pretty smoothly but the tangent program is huge.
Are you running this on the V5 Moby Hero robot ?
No running on simple a 4 motor drivetrain chassis
ok, so the example I briefly looked at was written for a 2 motor drive on the Moby robot. Have you reconfigured for 4 motor drive with any necessary changes to wheel size and/or gearing ?
I found the error with the help of a student. I’m the sample code the starting position was starting position x = x. Starting position y = x! Not sure if this was intentional but it was the source of all errors! We off to the races!