Hello Everyone, New Guy here

I am taking PLTW Engineering courses and have come across a small issue. My goal is to have the 'buzze1' blink for 10 seconds, or even light up, once the sensors are triggered, but I can't seem to get the light itself to work properly.

The way it differentiates between a soccer ball and a "human" is through a 5 second window. If the sensor is triggered twice in the five second window, the light is blocked, then the light will not flash because it will assume a goalie has entered the goal and exited. If it does not get triggered twice, then it will assume it was a ball traveling through.

However, the coding for that is not finished yet, so it should still light up.

Using VEX Cortex in Normal Language

Knowns: The light works, not blown
The motor shows it as getting '127' value, as it should
The program triggers the light for ten seconds, as it should (not programmed to blink just yet, want to fix this issue first)


The set up is very simple, all I have is two light sensors mounted across from two flashlights in a square opening made of VEX.

They work in a Cross pattern to cover more area of the opening.

A third flashlight is used as the buzzlight, i substituted an LED and changed all codes but it still did not work as wanted.

Here it is:
#pragma config(Sensor, in1, Sensor1, sensorReflection)
#pragma config(Sensor, in2, Sensor2, sensorReflection)
#pragma config(Sensor, dgtl1, BuzzeLight, sensorDigitalOut)
#pragma config(Motor, port1, Flashlight1, tmotorVexFlashlight, openLoop, reversed)
#pragma config(Motor, port2, buzz1, tmotorVexFlashlight, openLoop, reversed)
#pragma config(Motor, port10, Flashlight2, tmotorVexFlashlight, openLoop, reversed)
//*!!Code automatically generated by 'ROBOTC' configuration wizard !!*//

/*
Project Title: Smart Goal
Team Members: Shayan Ranjbari
Date: March 28, 2012
Section:


Task Description: Create a goal control system that will light up when a goal is made. Must differentiate between
human and ball.


Pseudocode:

*/

task main()
{
turnFlashlightOff(buzz1);

turnFlashlightOn(Flashlight1, 127); //Turns Flashlight1 on
turnFlashlightOn(Flashlight2, 127); //Turns Flashlight2 on
wait(1);

while (1 == 1)

{

if(SensorValue[Sensor2] >= 120)
{
waitInMilliseconds(5);

ClearTimer(T1);

if(SensorValue[Sensor1] <= 120 && SensorValue[Sensor2] <= 120 && time1(T1) <=5)
{
waitInMilliseconds(5);
turnFlashlightOn(buzz1, 127);
wait(10);
turnFlashlightOff(buzz1);


;
}
}

else if(SensorValue[Sensor1] >= 120)
{
waitInMilliseconds(5);

ClearTimer(T1);

if(SensorValue[Sensor1] <= 120 && SensorValue[Sensor2] <= 120 && time1(T1) <=5)
{
waitInMilliseconds(5);
turnFlashlightOn(buzz1, 127);
wait(10);
turnFlashlightOff(buzz1);

;
}
}

else
{

}






}

}


Thanks Gentlemen,
Shayan

Sorry, but since this is potentially school work I won't offer actual code to do what you're trying to do.

A piece of advice, though - try to start smaller. Add the very, very basic functionality to your code first, test it, make sure it works, then add additional complexity. Your pseudocode looks like you've programmed the entire thing at once, rather than making incremental improvements.

Welcome to ROBOTC Forums!

I'll try to provide some input without doing (what may be) your homework for you...

Can you get buzz1 to light up at all? Meaning, when you write:

just by itself (outside of the if/else statements), does the light come on? This will eliminate hardware issues.

Now, with the robot plugged in, look at the current debugger values for the sensors you have. Are they reading the values you think they should be reading?

EDIT:
I'm confused about the purpose of the timer... in line 40, you clear it out. In the if statement in line 42, you check to see if it's reading less than 5 milliseconds. This should always be true, and therefore doesn't really serve a purpose, right?

(Another thing to check... time1(T1) returns the value of the timer in milliseconds, not seconds...)


//Andrew