Configuring Your Hardware
Before you can communicate with the motor, servo and sensors that are connected to the Expansion Hub, you first must create a configuration file on your Robot Controller smartphone, so that the Robot Controller will know what hardware is available on the Expansion Hub.
Note that it will take an estimated 20 minutes to create the configuration file, configure a motor, configure a servo, and configure the color and touch sensors.
To start, you will need to create a configuration file:
| Creating a Configuration File on the Robot Controller |
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| 1. Power on the Expansion Hub by turning on the power switch.
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| 2. Plug the Type B Mini end of the USB cable into the USB mini port on the Expansion Hub.
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| 3. Plug the Type A end of the USB cable into the OTG adapter.
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| 4. Verify that your Robot Controller smartphone is powered on and unlocked. Plug in the USB Micro OTG adapter into the OTG port of the Robot Controller phone.
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| 5. The first time you connect the Robot Controller smartphone to the Expansion Hub, the Android operating system should prompt you to ask if it is OK to associate the newly detected USB device (which is the Expansion Hub) with the FTC Robot Controller app.
Important Information! You might be prompted multiple times to associate the USB hardware with the FTC Robot Controller. Whenever you are prompted by your phone with this message, you should always select the “Use by default for this USB device” option and hit the “OK” button to associate the USB device with the FTC Robot Controller app. If you fail to make this association, then the Robot Controller app might not reliably connect to this Expansion Hub the next time you turn your system on. |
| 6. Touch the three vertical dots in the upper right hand corner of the Robot Controller. This will launch a pop-up menu.
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| 7. Select Configure Robot from the pop up menu to display the Configuration screen.
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| 8. If your Robot Controller does not have any existing configuration files, the screen will display a message indicating that you need to create a file before proceeding.
Hit the “New” button to create a new configuration file for your Robot Controller. |
| 9. When the new configuration screen appears, the Robot Controller app will do a scan of the USB bus to see what devices are connected to the phone.
It will display the devices that it found in a list underneath the words “USB Devices in configuration.” You should see an entry that says something like “Expansion Hub Portal 1” in the list. Your Expansion Hub is listed as a Portal because it is directly connected to the Robot Controller phone through the USB cable. If you do not see your Expansion Hub Portal listed, check the wired connections and then press the Scan button one or two times to see if the phone detects the device on a re-scan of the USB bus. |
| 10. Touch the Portal listing (“Expansion Hub Portal 1” in this example) to display what Expansion Hubs are connected through this Portal.
Since we only have a single Expansion Hub connected, we should only see a single Expansion Hub configured (“Expansion Hub 2” in this example). |
| 11. TTouch the Expansion Hub listing (“Expansion Hub 2” in this example) to display the Input/Output ports for that device.
The screen should change and list all the motor, servo and sensor ports that are available on the selected Expansion Hub. |
Now that you've created a file, you will need to add a DC Motor to the configuration file.
Important note: At this point, although you have created your configuration file, you have not yet saved its contents to the robot controller. In this https://github.com/FIRST-Tech-Challenge/TmpTesting/wiki/Configuring-Your-Hardware/_edit#tutorial, you will save the configuration file in a later step.
| Configuring a DC Motor |
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| 1. Touch the word **Motors ** on the screen to display the Motor Configuration screen.
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| 2. Since we installed our motor onto port #0 of the Expansion Hub, use the dropdown control for port 0 to select the motor type (Tetrix Motor for this example).
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| 3. Use the touch screen keypad to specify a name for your motor (“motorTest” in this example).
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| 4. Press the Done button to complete the motor configuration. The app should return to the previous screen.
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You will also want to add a servo to the configuration file. In this example, you are using a standard 180-degree servo.
| Configuring a Servo |
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| 1. Touch on the word Servos on the screen to display the Servo Configuration screen.
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| 2. Use the dropdown control to select “Servo” as the servo type for port #0.
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| 3. Use the touch pad to specify the name of the servo (“servoTest” for this example) for port #0.
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| 4. Press the Done button to complete the servo configuration. The app should return to the previous screen.
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The REV Robotics Color Distance Sensor is an I2C sensor. It actually combines two sensor functions into a single device. It is a color sensor, that can determine the color of an object. It is also a distance or range sensor, that can be used to measure short range distances. Note that in this tutorial, the word "distance" is used interchangeably with the word "range".
| Configuring a Color Distance Sensor |
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| 1. Touch the words I2C Bus 0 on the screen to launch the I2C configuration screen for this I2C bus.
The Expansion Hub has four independent I2C buses, labeled “0” through “3”. In this example, since you connected the Color Sensor to the port labeled “0”, it resides on I2C Bus 0. |
| 2. Look at the I2C Bus 0 screen. There should already be a sensor configured for this bus. The Expansion Hub has its own built-in inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor. This sensor can be used to determine the orientation of a robot, as well as measure the accelerations on a robot.
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| 3. Press the Add button to add another I2C device to this bus.
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| 4. Select “REV Color/Range Sensor” from the dropdown selector for this new device. Use the touchscreen keyboard to name this device “sensorColorRange”.
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| 5. Press the Done button to complete the I2C sensor configuration. The app should return to the previous screen.
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The REV Robotics Touch Sensor is a digital device. The Touch Sensor is HIGH (returns TRUE) when it is not pressed. It is pulled LOW (returns FALSE) when it is pressed.
| Configuring a Digital Touch Sensor |
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| 1. Touch the words Digital Devices on the screen to launch the Digital I/O configuration screen.
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| 2. Use the touch screen to add a “Digital Device” for port #1 and name the device “digitalTouch”.
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| 3. Press the Done button to return to the previous screen.
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Once you have configured your hardware, you must save the information to the configuration file. If you do not save this information, it will be lost and the robot controller will be unable to communicate with your hardware.
| Saving the Configuration Information |
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| 1. Press the Done button to go up one level in the configuration screens.
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| 2. Press the Done button again to return to the highest level in the configuration screens.
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| 3. Press the Save button.
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| 4. When prompted, specify a configuration file name using the touchscreen’s keypad (use “TestConfig” for this example).
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| 5. Press the OK button to save your configuration information using that file name.
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| 6. After the configuration file has been saved, touch the Android back-arrow button to return to the main screen of the app.
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| 7. Verify that the configuration file is the active configuration file on the main Robot Controller screen.
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