Probe wire value on NXT? (Archived)

[David_Fort]

Update: This discussion applies to Issues from the 2010 FTC season and is no longer relevant for current FTC competition software.

In LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS you can switch between "Target to NXT" and "Target to Computer Mode"

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Can the Probe feature (or any other technique) be used to monitor the value of some wire in a VI running remotely in Debug mode on an NXT?

i.e. click the Arrow/Light bulb button.

wait a while for deploy

Arrow turns into "running" arrow.

hover over wire, right click, Probe, "not executed".

I would think being able to monitor the value of an arbitrary wire in debug mode would be one of the key features of debug mode, but I can't find a way to do it.

Suggestions?

Thanks,

David

[David_Fort]

Does anybody know what this means:

Note To use debugging tools such as execution highlighting,  probes,  breakpoints, and single-stepping with FTC Tools VIs, you must connect the NXT  brick to the host computer through a Bluetooth connection and then connect the  NXT brick to the FIRST Field Control System (FCS) through the wireless  WiFi module included in the FTC kit. You also must target the VI to the host  computer.

In particular, if I'm connecting to the NXT via bluetooth, then how/why do I target the VI to the host computer?

It all seems incongruous with the statement above that in the help:

You can use the FTC Tools VIs only in VIs that run directly on the NXT brick.

[Philbot]

It's probably too late for this answer... but for the record....

Use the Tools / NXT Tools / NXT Terminal  program for establishing your connection between Labview and the NXT via bluetooth.

Once you have done that, you can "Target To NXT" and the orange text box will say "NXT Name [Bluetooth]"

I haven't been able to get wire probes to work on the NXT, but "Debug mode" does work, albeit very slowly.

So you can display a wire value on the Front Panel (as an indicator), and see it update whail the NXT is running.

Try to keep these to a minimum otherwise performance will suffer badly..

Phil.

[David_Fort]

Thanks.

That matches what we have experienced.

(i.e. controls on front panel work in debug (light bulb) mode, but ad hoc

probe of wire value doesn't).

Thanks for the response.

[update:  Note you can drill down through blocks on your control diagram and see the front panel of the vi for that block while the parent is running.  Since the "terminals" of a block are on its front panel, often that will provide useful numbers for debugging (assuming the blocks you use are really .vi's containing other blocks, which is often the case)]

Message was edited by: David Fort with tip about drilling to sub-vi