Locking Controller in Driver Station

[raptaconehs]

Currently our team uses one Xbox 360 controller and one 3-axis joystick. The Xbox controller is supposed to be recognized as the primary controller. When we were at scrimmage the driver station recognized the 3-axis controller as controller number 1 on the driver station which caused malfunctioning of the robot. Is there any way to lock the Xbox 360 controller as the number 1 controller on the driver station?

[jvriezen]

Currently our team uses one Xbox 360 controller and one 3-axis joystick. The Xbox controller is supposed to be recognized as the primary controller. When we were at scrimmage the driver station recognized the 3-axis controller as controller number 1 on the driver station which caused malfunctioning of the robot. Is there any way to lock the Xbox 360 controller as the number 1 controller on the driver station?

I don't know if there is or not, but regardless, you can have a driver pre-match checklist that is taped to the laptop or driver station that includes checking that this is correct before every match. Might be a few other pre-match checklist items that you might want to add also... like say, pre-loading a ball. We forgot to do that in 2012 on our first match.

[Greg McKaskle]

We originally tried to use a USB hub and make the order match the hub ports. But USB has its own idea of how things get enumerated, and it rarely matches the ink on the case.

The typical joystick also doesn't have a serial number, so there is no way to identify a joystick uniquely and follow it from port to port. All we have is VID and PID -- vendor and product IDs. Many teams with multiple joysticks use the same model.

So in the end, we rely on the enumerate order of what is plugged in and we consistently index it. It is certainly a good idea to verify the joysticks are as expected. It should be pretty predictable, but if you randomly plug stuff in, it won't be, and the setup page is how you adjust it.

Greg McKaskle