The built-in webcam viewer in SmartDashboard is hardcoded to only connect to the roboRIO. If you use
the GRIP SmartDashboard extension, you can customize the address to the Kangaroo PC.
The ability to run GRIP at startup depends on being able to give it command line arguments for what file to open. This was added recently (
#498), and will be in the next release (which hopefully will be out before stop build day)
Another bleeding-edge feature is the ability to start and stop GRIP with NetworkTables (
#505). This will probably help with battery usage.
Code:
NetworkTable table = NetworkTable.getTable("GRIP");
table.putBoolean("run", false); // Stop GRIP without killing the process
doSomeStuffThatDoesntNeedVision();
table.putBoolean("run", true); // Start GRIP again