Sumobot + PING - Avoid pauses while waiting for ping

flowstate

Hi,

I've got a sumobot using Ping sensors (a pair up front). Currently, the code works, and is pretty standard. If either of the sensors sees something closer than the radius of the ring, it's flag is set to 1, else 0.

I found that to avoid cross-chatter between the sensors, I'm having to introduce a pause. This, added to the natural pause on the PULSIN command, has given me a robot that stutters like Forrest Gump. I know we can't use threading in BASIC, but has anyone found a way around this? Below is the way that I'm reading the input from the Pings. I'm basically running the standard SumoWrestler code, substituting Pings in place of the IR pairs.

PULSOUT Left_Ping_Pin, 5
PULSIN Left_Ping_Pin, 1, time
inDistance = inConstant ** time  ' not sure of the math on this one, but it's from the Parallax site
PAUSE 50

I do that twice (once for each Ping), and then go on about my business. However, the length of this function creates the servo stuttering I mentioned earlier. Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Eric

flowstate

So I solved the problem. Basically, after each PULSIN call to a Ping, I called the Pulse_Servos subroutine. This came in under the 20ms requirement for smooth servo manipulation

Ronbert

Could you expand on your second post with some code? I'm in a situation like this and am displeased with the pause times.

So say I check the ping sensors, instead of putting

PAUSE 20
RETURN

just do

GOSUB Forward
RETURN

Franklin

[COLOR=#333333]So say I check the ping sensors, instead of putting[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]PAUSE 20[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#333333]RETURN[/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]just do [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#333333]GOSUB Forward[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#333333]RETURN

anything you can fit into those 20 ms can be substituted for the pause or any part of it. If you had something that took 10 ms you could use that and a PAUSE 10.[/COLOR]