Spike Prime advanced driving base + xbox control

[MrLuboG]

Hi, a complete newbie here....I am trying to create a program to control my Spike Prime Advanced Driving Base with an xbox controller. I can get the driving base (motors A and E) to work using left joystick vertical for driving front and back and right joystick horizontal for turning left and right. However I can't figure out how to control the motors of lift arms (motors C and D) with the xbox buttons. It works if I use one joystick for driving and the other for the arms but I would like to move motor C in one direction by pressing the UP button and opposite direction by pressing the DOWN button on my controller and motor D using the LB and RB buttons. What am I missing? Thank you in advance.

[laurensvalk]

Can you show us your current code so we can help you expand it?

[BertLindeman]

Hi,

Just curious: did you notice the motornames are swapped on the drivebase definition?
In a small demo program this might not be so important.

Bert

[MrLuboG]

Ok, this is what I've got, but I can't find the "wait until released" block in the panel. Sorry for these trivial questions, I am new to Pybricks and have only knowledge of native Spike programming app.

[MrLuboG]

@BertLindeman oh yeah, this is me being messy I essentially wanted to swap the front and rear ends of the driving base

[MrLuboG]

Success!! (thank you for letting me work it out on my own - with a little help of chatGPT). Here is my working code that lets me start and stop motors C and D and run them in both directions:

from pybricks.hubs import PrimeHub
from pybricks.iodevices import XboxController
from pybricks.parameters import Axis, Button, Direction, Port, Stop
from pybricks.pupdevices import Motor
from pybricks.robotics import DriveBase
from pybricks.tools import multitask, run_task, wait

# Set up all devices.
prime_hub = PrimeHub(top_side=Axis.Z, front_side=Axis.Y)
leftmotor = Motor(Port.E, Direction.COUNTERCLOCKWISE)
rightmotor = Motor(Port.A, Direction.CLOCKWISE)
drive_base = DriveBase(leftmotor, rightmotor, 88, 144)
arm_C = Motor(Port.C, Direction.CLOCKWISE)
arm_D = Motor(Port.D, Direction.CLOCKWISE)
xbox = XboxController()

async def main1():
    while True:
        await wait(1)
        drive_base.drive(2 * xbox.joystick_left()[1], xbox.joystick_right()[0])

async def main2():
    while True:
        while not Button.A in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_C.run(100)
        while Button.A in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_C.stop()
        while not Button.B in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_C.run(-100)
        while Button.B in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_C.stop()

async def main3():
    while True:
        while not Button.X in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_D.run(100)
        while Button.X in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_D.stop()
        while not Button.Y in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_D.run(-100)
        while Button.Y in xbox.buttons.pressed():
            await wait(1)
        arm_D.stop()

async def main():
    await multitask(main1(), main2(), main3())

run_task(main())

This was truly exciting!

[BertLindeman]

Looks good.

Maybe for later readers.
To wait for a button release you can use the green NOT block.

Like this:

Pybricks is fun!

Bert

[corticalstack]

@MrLuboG thanks for raising this discussion, you are a few days ahead of me. Thanks to your initial work, it helped me get going with controlling the prime advanced chassis with pybricks and xbox controller. My kids love it!

[laurensvalk]

It also occurred to me you can play with higher acceleration values for the Drivebase - see the blue configuration block.

That makes it feel more responsive since your controller joystick is already doing the smoothing you need (instead of having two layers of smoothing)