Ideally we should set up continuous integration to flag compile errors. I've been having some trouble adding continuous integration to the repository. The latest attempts are in the master branch.

Using Travis

I'm giving up for now, leaving this for someone to pick up at a later time.

There is quite a significant delay between stick movements on controller and PWM output, likely caused by controller input and PWM output being in separate threads. Fix: do in one thread.

This will prevent help reduce unintended behavior and more explicit code.

Serial logging is useful for development purposes, but is useless when fighting. Logging to the web interface will allow status monitoring during fighting.

The current codebase is 'horrendous' 😒

We should at least get this thing using mbed RTOS.

Features

This is a working document to determine what we want in triforce-control v1.0.0. All discussions are welcome. Development is taking place on rtos-dev.

Closed loop weapon motor control

• Sense RPM of ring
• Sense RPM of weapon motors, and therefore contact wheels (mechanical linkage)
• Prevent contact wheel slippage by:
  • Limiting angular acceleration of weapon motors.
  • Detecting slippage as difference contact point velocities, and adjusting motor according to error.
• The user input is filtered to prevent large accelerations that would lead to slippage.

Dual Controller

• One controller for drive.
• One controller for weapon.
• Both controllers have their own arm switch (position 1: armed, position 2, disarmed).
• Both controllers are independent.

Failsafe

• If drive controller signal is lost, fully disarm the robot (including weapon).
• If weapon controller is lost, disarm weapon only (allowing drive to continue as normal).
• If both controllers are lost, fully disarm.

Arm state LEDS (mbed LEDS)

Additional LED control

• Strobing LEDS or something
• TBC

Logging

• Logs written to local flash memory
• Option to write logs to serial

Serial interface

• Allow basic commands through serial interface (useful for debugging)

Relevant sites/papers

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~johannb/Papers/y
https://youtu.be/3yXlmJyL7pE

CANBUS can be used to communicate with ESCs. This allows sensor data to be collected from the ESC as well as allowing motor control.

List of commands here: https://github.com/TechAUmNu/A450S/blob/master/comm_can.c

Currently the weapon outputs are commented out , and the weapon ESCs are connected directly to the receiver. In a perfect world the mbed would be used to filter weapon signal from transmitter to prevent rapid spikes in throttle.

We already receive status commands from VESCs. Also allow VESCs to be controlled via CAN bus rather than PWM.

We currently use some deprecated features that prevent us from updating to the latest version of mbed-os. Write replacements for these features and update to the latest.