Community Documents
Introduction
For this project we had to create a program that could both control the kart's mechatronic components, but also communicate with a base station to establish the game framework. We create two separate sets of code one that ran on the base station PC and another set that ran on each of the four go karts. CompactRIO is a multi layered platform with a Real Time computer, and an FPGA target. The Real Time computer allows us to connect over wifi and process tag information, while the FPGA allows us to connect everything to the inputs and outputs of our system.
Go Kart Code
Most of the time the go kart code just sits and waits while the user operates the car, but when it receives a signal it can actuate one of many functions. Then cRIO would receive a signal from an RFID tag directly through the reader or get a signal via wifi from the base station.
Base Station
The base station's job is to keep track of all of the items. When an item is picked up it is added to an array of items with properties like a timestamp when it was pick up, who picked it up and if it has been deployed. Items like mushrooms activate right away for the player who first picked it up, but banana peels are first picked up, then activated once a second player comes into range.
