It's a little late for your use this season, but team 174 has just posted our code for the past season, which includes some custom SmartDashboard widgets. We used the SD to display the state of our robot, which was a huge help during our early season debugging. We also have a widget to directly modify our autonomous modes, and view feedback from our autonomous driving.
Here is a link to our chief post
We were able to use the SmartDashboard to provide a ton of unsight during our debugging process, and I hope that it can get the recognition it desrves
-PJ