Reader looking for feedback - FLL issue

I got an email from Linda... she's got an interesting problem and I'm hoping readers can offer some advice. Here is her situation:

I am a FLL coach, and I have a problem with the NXT program files
that I can't figure out. The team wants the programs to be in a
certain order, so they deleted all their programs and re-downloaded
them in the desired order, and even renamed them "1-Dirt Trap, 2-
Bone, etc. to make it easy to see that they are using the correct
program on the FLL missions. Here's the problem. After selecting and
running 1-Dirt Trap, you push the back button one time (and still see
1-Dirt Trap in the window), press the right arrow to go to 2-Bone,
select 2-Bone, run 2-Bone, and press the back button. Instead of
seeing 2-Bone in the window, which would mean that one press of the
right arrow gets you right to 3-Magnet, the window hops back to 1-
Dirt Trap, so you have to press the right arrow 2 times to get to 3-
Magnet. Since there are 9 missions, you can see that by the time you
are running 7-Elevator, it's really frustrating and time consuming to
be back at the 1-Dirt Trap screen, and have to press the right arrow
seven times to get to program 8. Why does the back button take you
back to the very first program you ran? Is there anyway to make it
stay on the most recently run program? We know that we could use some
programming techniques to run the missions sequentially, but
occasionally a mission fails and needs to be rerun rather than
automatically progress to the next mission. Also, if a mission has to
be rerun, that consumes time, so the team might choose to skip a less
valuable mission. So we would prefer to have the greater control of
actually selecting the programs on the screen.

Comments

Robolab29 said…
We have had this problem, and as far as I know, there is no easy way around it. One way trick is to link all your programs toegther and use a touch sensor delay in between. And this actually improves your speed spent in base.

Limit Busters 585, SC
Anonymous said…
As far as I know, there is no way around this issue, I'm getting quite annoyed about it as well (though I'm not in the FLL). My only guess (and way around it), is the same as the comment above mine. My only other thought (if it's allowed in the FLL rules), is to use a bluetooth enabled cell phone to change the programs (lego has released the software for this), you could even still send the bot back to base, just the cell phones interface may be able to do what you want even when the NXT screen is not.
Anonymous said…
Using bluetooth is NOT allowed in FLL. Some teams might try to "remote control" the robot.

Steve
Anonymous said…
You could put all your missions into one program by using the switch block. By using values its possible to fully control which mission you are doing.
Yeah, I tried to do something like that for my team (all the programs linked together), and found a NXT bug: After a certain number of move blocks (maybe any blocks) are placed in front of a wait for or switch block the NXT will cut short move blocks (not go for the specified rotations) that are placed after the switch/wait for block! It's really wierd...

-Jonathan

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