Testing SmartDashboard Widgets without a robot
 

Hi,
A couple of students on my team are writing extensions for SmartDashboard. They want to work on this at home. I'm looking for a way to test the new extension.

One thing we tried with the VerticalBar tutorial example is making the class extend StaticWidget instead of Widget, change class var to different value(0->50 for example), recompile, copy to jar to extensions folder, add new widget to dash. Now the widget shows half green, half black so you can test colors and that the amount of color is half the widget.
But this is kind of tiring and time consuming.

Is there an 'easy' way to simulate a robot sending updates to the SmartDashboard? Anyone tried something like this?

Thanks.
-Maciej

Re: Testing SmartDashboard Widgets without a robot
 

I'm assuming your cRIO is in the bag with the robot.

If it isn't you could do a simple test board with it, the PD board, and a main breaker, then write a simple program that sends random/joystick values.

Re: Testing SmartDashboard Widgets without a robot
 

Thanks for the suggestion. By robot I meant no crio. The students want to work on this at home.

Re: Testing SmartDashboard Widgets without a robot
 

RobotPy has an implementation of SmartDashboard/NetworkTables written in python... I believe it works on a PC too, but I haven't tried it yet.

Re: Testing SmartDashboard Widgets without a robot
 

If you get the NetTable server jar file (search around for it), and run it, then create the smartDashbaord table, you have have ZomB connect to it also (make sure to specify the ip address in the ZomB url: zomb://your.ip/NetTable ). This is exactly how I verified ZomB's NetTable Protocol support. If you need help, feel free to contact me