cRio Simulation?

[LockheedJoe]

Is there a way to run the cRio Robot software in Simulation mode on your desktop computer, no cRio hooked up? I would like to be able to have the kids "play" on with the code on their own but we only have one cRio and it's at school.

[Doug_Norman]

There is currently no simulation mode.  This is something we have discussed, but have not implemented.  One suggestion I have is to have students look at the examples.  While they can't run them without a cRIO, they can see wiring diagrams and read about how things work.

[LockheedJoe]

Thanks, we've been doing that. "Doing" is much more evective than "Seeing". I've also thought about putting a case stucture around every sub.vi call for specific subVis that are cRio specific but that's a daunting task for such a short build season.

Thanks

[Doug_Norman]

I agree with doing over seeing.  If you had simulation mode, what would you expect to happen when

you run?  That's a question we ask ourselves when brainstorming on this.  There needs to be some kind of feedback that things are "working" as expected.

[LockheedJoe]

Unfortunantly, the "what is done" in simulation mode depends a lot on what the user wants and I haven't seen a Telepathic.vi yet. (If it read my mind it would crash the machine! )

At one time I had a few ideas on what I would like to see coming back. If the application is narrowed down to FIRST, there might be something that can be put together. i.e. a .avi file coming into the camera, some type of coherent data coming back from gyro, things like that. But without a SIL (Software In the Loop) simulation going, I'm not sure. Hmmm, SIL for next years FIRST. Just a thoughtbut I may play with that thought some.

In CVI, for my own use, I've kludge together some routines so I can preload a queue with what I'm expecting to see on calls to my low level inserturment drivers. This is then set up as one queue for the DMM calls, one queue for the Scope calls, etc, so the data preloaded is device specific. Then I run and get data back like I expect. I sometimes use random number generators to send back random answers within a range (good for dmm when looking for values in a certain range).

This works with the sequental code pardigm but in the LabVIEW dataflow paradigm, you don't alway know what's going to happen next.

Thanks