On Monday, we were able to drive the robot using the USB cable. Since Jonah setup the router over the weekend and flashed the Samantha drive, we should be ready to go. All the lights looked correct: Blue ON, White Flashing, Red ON. The USB cable was moved over, but in the RobotC communication controller, we couldn't see the NXT.
Power down, reboot, press the red button... no joy. We were close but not quite there yet. Tom took the robot home and reported later that the length of time that the red button is pressed is GoldyLocks critical. Too short, nothing happens. Too long and the Samantha module shuts down. With just the "right" amount of time, it works fine.
To enable multiple station editing, we're now taking advantage of our Team license and getting more laptops up and running. Another problem crept up on the laptops which were loaded with RobotC over the summer. The NXT would accept the compiled download but refused to run the program. The NXT screen questioned the version of something. Looking at the laptop revealed a corresponding error pertaining to a Fantom driver. Fortunately the RobotC Forum had a quick answer on that issue.
Apparently the newer version of the NXT driver doesn't enter the registry properly. If we uninstall the NXT driver, re-install an older version of the NXT driver and then update it to the latest version, everything gets sorted out and it will run properly. The forum topic that we referred to when solving this problem can be found here: http://www.robotc.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3469
With Keith Hall's help learning CREO and Tom Wolcott's help with the C code, we are in a position to start making real progress. We now have working communications with the NXT, plus installed and working copies of RobotC and CREO, so we can really start to dig in and generate code and manipulator designs.
Power down, reboot, press the red button... no joy. We were close but not quite there yet. Tom took the robot home and reported later that the length of time that the red button is pressed is GoldyLocks critical. Too short, nothing happens. Too long and the Samantha module shuts down. With just the "right" amount of time, it works fine.
To enable multiple station editing, we're now taking advantage of our Team license and getting more laptops up and running. Another problem crept up on the laptops which were loaded with RobotC over the summer. The NXT would accept the compiled download but refused to run the program. The NXT screen questioned the version of something. Looking at the laptop revealed a corresponding error pertaining to a Fantom driver. Fortunately the RobotC Forum had a quick answer on that issue.
Apparently the newer version of the NXT driver doesn't enter the registry properly. If we uninstall the NXT driver, re-install an older version of the NXT driver and then update it to the latest version, everything gets sorted out and it will run properly. The forum topic that we referred to when solving this problem can be found here: http://www.robotc.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3469
With Keith Hall's help learning CREO and Tom Wolcott's help with the C code, we are in a position to start making real progress. We now have working communications with the NXT, plus installed and working copies of RobotC and CREO, so we can really start to dig in and generate code and manipulator designs.