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Greg Pilla - TEAMS TA

Contact Information

Hi, I'm Greg. Last year I worked with Mr. Rhine to develop the Interactive Robotics course for TEAMS. I made additions to the C API for the Command Module, and helped students with Robotics questions and issues. This semester, I am involved in another project here at UMass, so I probably will not be directly involved. If you do have any questions, I can respond via email.

There are some questions and answers at the bottom of my page from last year. Maybe they will still be helpful if someone has some strange errors. If you run into some strange errors, but manage to figure them out, you should post the problem and it's solution to your personal page, so that it can help other people and save them time.

End of Semester ToDo List

Fall '08 Classes

• Artificial Intelligence
  • Tue. 5:30 PM
• Data Visualization
  • Wed. 5:30 PM
• Operating Systems I
  • Thu 5:30 PM

Links

This is a list of sites created using PmWiki (what we are using).

WikiHistory is one of the wikis on the list. It can be edited without
a password, so it may be a good idea to look at it for examples.

Thanks for starting this, Chris M! I already see some potential collisions.
Give this a look before you start linking.

You may have already found this in the PmWiki Documentation.
This list will be helpful if you work with WikiStyles.

Resources

Quotes

Attaching Pictures

Great Teacher Onizuka
%center% Attach:gto1.jpg Attach:gto2.jpg %%

After you add these lines, a blue underlined link will appear on your page.
Click the link to go to the upload form, and decide what picture to upload.
The picture will then take the place of the link. The default file size limit is 50KB.

Question Area

Feel free to ask questions relevant to the course, and I'll try to answer them.

1. Do I answer right below here? -Greg Pilla
   Yup! Just start with the '#' character and then type the question.
   Feel free to leave your name after the question, too.
2. How can I get a picture on the wiki? -Greg Pilla
   You can edit my page and see how I did it.
   For small pictures, you can use the attach feature, as above.
   The main problem will be getting the picture you want to display on the web.
   If you want to use one of the photos you sent in for TEAMS, they can be found here.
   If you want to use a bigger picture, email it to me and I will put it online.
   Many of you are using online photo albums, which works well too.
3. I wanted to add a forum-like discussion board in my cohort's wiki. I've been doing some searching and found a recipe in the cookbook that allows us to essentially append the page without going into edit, using the form . It is called Fox. Could you add this into the cookbook so that we can use it? - Manan Thakkar
   It's finally up! Have fun.
4. I downloaded Realterm to my computer but whenever I try to run it I get this error message: "Bad ID, Probably PORT does not exist ie_BadID - Specified comport doesn't exist." I think it might be becuase I'm using a USB to Serial cable to hook the computer to the robot. What should I do? - Erin Webster
   If you know which COM port your USB to serial adapter is assigned (it might have said it upon installation) you can create a shortcut that might work. Right click on the realterm shortcut and put the following into the target box:
   "C:\Program Files\BEL\Realterm\realterm.exe" port=#
   Where # is the port number and the file path is your install path. ~ Chris M.
   Nicely done, Chris. Alternatively, you could go to Hardware Manager under System Properties, and change the port setting of the adapter to "com 1" (right click->properties->advanced... button), but Chris' method is safer.
5. I was trying to load the program to the Create (Part 4: “[WinAVR] Program”) when I got this error message:
   " avrdude.exe has stopped working A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available." I closed it and Windows did not notify me of a solution. What is avrdude.exe? What should I do? -Erin Webster
   avrdude.exe is one of the packaged WinAVR programs, and it's purpose is to take the executable file of the program you wrote and properly load it into the Command Modules memory. Unfortunately, I have not seen this problem, so I don't know exactly what to do at this point. Are you using Windows Vista or XP? I haven't had the oppertunity to run WinAVR under Vista.
   Here's what I would do: first, try to close as many programs as possible that are running in the background, especially anything which might try to use devices connected to a USB port. You could also go into the WinAVR directory, find the avrdude.exe file, right-click on it and enter its properties, and try different compatibility modes. You could also try running avrdude.exe on its own (without using Programmers Notepad). Since you're not telling it to do anything, it should begin to run and complain about not being told what to do. If it does this, then the problem is with a specific procecdure within avrdude, but if it crashes in the same way, the problem is probably more general, and you may be able to tinker with Windows to have it allow avrdude to run correctly.
   Anyway, let me know how these suggestions work out. The more information I have about your computer and the situation the error occurs in, the more I can help.
   
   I am using vista, and the good news is I took out my USB stick and the avrdude.exe message is no longer coming up. But now when I "make all" I get:

Compiling C: create.c
avr-gcc -c -mmcu=atmega168 -I. -gdwarf-2 -DF_CPU=18432000UL -Os -funsigned-char -funsigned-bitfields -fpack-struct -fshort-enums -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef -Wa,-adhlns=obj/create.lst -std=gnu99 -Wundef -MD -MP -MF .dep/create.o.d create.c -o obj/create.o
create.c: In function 'cr8_update':
create.c:375: error: 'cr8_t' has no member named 'adc_right'
create.c:386: error: 'cr8_t' has no member named 'adc_right'
create.c: In function 'cr8_print_to_usb':
create.c:628: warning: pointer targets in passing argument 1 of 'strlen' differ in signedness
make.exe: *** [obj/create.o] Error 1
> Process Exit Code: 2
> Time Taken: 00:00
Any advice? -Erin

Sorry, my fault. I have corrected the files and uploaded them to the wiki. Download the template again and replace your create.c file with the new create.c file. -Greg

I got the new create.c and the avrdude.exe problem is back, so I switched laptops(this one is XP not vista) and I got the same error. Here is a screen shot of my code, the error message and the output. Attach: Problem_Screen.ppt -Erin Webster I figured out what was wrong, I just moved that file that you had us move on Wednesday in the Computer Lab and now its working great! Sorry, I wish I'd figured out that that was the problem earlier. -Erin

1. I'm having a problem, I'm not sure if its the program when it tries to compile or my code, so I took a screen shot of the code and the error messages in the output. Attach: Error_Screen.ppt What should I do? -Erin Webster
   Since this error appears when you do Make All, it is a compiler error. The error here is the semicolon's after the if statement and the else if statement. Try to think of an entire if statement as the condition you are testing, and' the block of code in curly braces following it. When you put a semicolon after an if statement, you end the if statement, so it's as if it has an empty pair of curly braces. Since the semicolon has ended the if statement, the curly braces you typed after it are not attached to it, and will run every time (this is not a compiler error, but it is a logic error). Also, since you've ended the if statement far before it, the else statement after it also cannot find the if statement it should be attached to (This is a compiler error, since the else must be attached to an if).
2. I can't get programs to load onto the create. I checked the ports and they all match up. (I'm not running off a USB now). Here's the error screen. Attach: Port_Trouble.ppt -Erin Webster
   Your settings are correct, so it should be working. In cases like this, there's a good chance that Windows or WinAVR has had some sort of invisible error, or possibly another program/device is interfering. Try restarting the Programmers Notepad, and if that doesn't work, try restarting Windows. If it still doesn't work, see if you have other programs that might be monitoring USB ports, or devices that are plugged into USB ports, stop/power down/disconnect them. I see that you are using Vista, and I don't have alot of experience with it, but hopefully these general suggestions will lead to the solution.