Driver Station Rule Check [Archive]

faust1706

10-06-2014, 02:01

Is it legal to have 2 computers on a team's driver station? The two computers would be a laptop and a single board computer for skeleton tracking and it would send the data to the computer right next.

Mk.32

10-06-2014, 04:15

Why do you need two computers to do this? "skeleton tracking" I assume you mean something like a kinect? A any decent newish laptop should be able to run the DS and the kinect process and whatever if it's legal or not be a lot less hardware to lug to the field each match.

pastelpony

10-06-2014, 06:18

A single board computer as in a Raspberry Pi/Beagleboard? I mean, teams have used Kinects and their laptop webcams with Cheesy Vision for that kind of tracking. I think you can probably classify it as a peripheral, as long as it's USB-connected. It's not unheard of for teams to use I/O boards on their DS, so I don't see why a single-board computer is any different as long as it doesn't connect to the FMS. I think it is legal (I've actually heard pf RPis attached to drive stations).

Al Skierkiewicz

10-06-2014, 07:38

I do not believe there is a rule against this. The whole setup cannot exceed the size limitations in the robot rules. However, any problems you have with driving due to the second computer, will not be the responsibility of the FTA and other event staff to diagnose. If it fails, they will simply disable and move on. See above posts for better solutions.

FrankJ

10-06-2014, 08:42

Of course you are going to have to wait for the 2015 rules to come out to know for sure. :)

Joe Ross

10-06-2014, 11:57

What method would the SBC communicate with the Driver Station computer? If it's ethernet, see R93.

faust1706

10-06-2014, 15:28

Why do you need two computers to do this? "skeleton tracking" I assume you mean something like a kinect? A any decent newish laptop should be able to run the DS and the kinect process and whatever if it's legal or not be a lot less hardware to lug to the field each match.

Because we got it to work perfectly in linux using skeltrack. We are still working on getting the kinect sdk to work for windows.

pyroslev

12-06-2014, 20:29

I agree with Al. Nothing is forbidding it so long as you comply with the already there DS rules. I've seen some over the top driver station setups that complied with the rules with just one computer.

Can you post a picture of the setup?

faust1706

12-06-2014, 21:15

I agree with Al. Nothing is forbidding it so long as you comply with the already there DS rules. I've seen some over the top driver station setups that complied with the rules with just one computer.

Can you post a picture of the setup?

This was just speculation. We got skeleton tracking working in linux, and I was wondering if we could have an odroid run skeleton tracking and send the data over to the DS during auton, but I finally got the kinect sdk working after some hair pulling, so this question is now void :D