[Greg McKaskle]

To the original poster, I'm impressed with your curiosity, and I'm glad you are asking for input on the topic.

The DS was written with safety as a top concern. Historically, people working with dangerous machinery love to remove safety guards in order to improve their efficiency, and SW is no different. So, I'm not going to give you directions on how to remove the safety guard, and if you find a way, I encourage you to tell me or FIRST rather than telling your friends and then watching them get hurt using a less safe system.

I freely admit that the space bar makes it a bit too easy to estop the robot, and it takes more time than you'd like in order to undo the estop. I've done it myself, plenty of times, and it is worth discussing if there is a better estop, but not worth disabling.

As others have mentioned, the sure way to avoid estop is to use a different computer, or to disable the robot before using the laptop for other purposes.

Dave, some aspects of the DS were inspired by your emulator, like the I/O button names, but the spacebar is just one of those coincidences. It is interesting to hear that you made the same safety decisions in yours.

Greg McKaskle