[Greg McKaskle]

Some of the DS protocols have been reverse engineered and unofficial ones have been used in off-season situations. If you look around, I'm sure that you can find some of the info. Or you can use wireshark and work your way through it.

But, remember that the DS is a key safety element. If it were to fail to disable or estop a robot, or were to slip into tele or auto at the wrong moment, the robot WILL respond. The cRIO implements a watchdog to shutdown if the DS disappears, but if the DS is there, it is trusted, and that means that the DS is largely responsible for the state of the robot.

For the record, the field doesn't know or care what OS or language the DS is running on. Both Windows and linux were considered. Windows was selected primarily to simplify the admin duties -- no flames please, I know it isn't that difficult with linux and isn't simple with Windows. I suppose ideally, the DS would be available for everyone's chosen OS. The DS was/is currently written in LV, and LV exists for all of the major laptop OSes, but the level of testing and integration for things like detecting joystick insertion/removal, and supporting the FirstTouch board make it pretty time consuming to add another OS. Even Windows 8 will obviously require lots of hand testing to validate the safety and networking requirements. Additionally, the FTAs and CSAs who try to efficiently resolve connectivity and versioning issues would now need to be aware of many additional OS factors. In the end, it is an arbitrary decision necessary to simplify the logistics.

Greg McKaskle