As you can see, teams develop their own culture and style when it comes to setting up autonomous. Some like SmartDashboard, others have been burned by it.
Our team has tried DIP switch panels in the past, but last year we added one of these to the top panel of the robot:
http://www.robotshop.com/ca/en/gravi...module-v1.html
This is a 12-position analog rotary encoder switch with built in LEDs. We connected this to one of the analog inputs on the RoboRio. Each position on the switch feeds it a different voltage level, so it just took some simple experimentation to decode each position.
The Drive Team then literally dials in which auto mode they want. The correct LED lights up on the dial, and/or they can count the clicks. They really liked this system. The downside being that only 12 modes are possible with one switch, but you could combine this with another one (run auto mode 6, distance setting 11), or combine with something else.
I think we'll do this again, and maybe dress it up a bit to play up the mechanical bits to go with the steampunk theme.