Regarding Team 810's 2003 Dashboard Program...
Me and Dan wrote the entire thing on a coach bus on two laptops, testing with our 2003 OI and 2002 RC. Granted, we spent a year (I took the 2002 robot home over the summer) trying to get it to work before that, but the point is, once you get a basic serial port reading program down, it's easy to add stuff.
Our biggest problem is that we tried to feedback too much data. We sed the basic run bit (as explinaed above) to try and multiplex our feedback. BAD IDEA!!! I'm still not sure why, but it completely skewered our results, and caused a long, painful, year of fustration. So, unless someone can shed some light on my problems, multiplexing is a BAD IDEA!!!!!!
That being said, the dashboard program was very useful, except you have to know what needs to come back and be displayed. Right now, there's about 5 or 6 things that should have been displayed, and we would've moved in several more matches (NEVER LEAVE YOUR PNEUMATICS DISCHARGED!). It was also very helpful in determining whether or not we were in gear, as our gears weren't very happy, and didn't like to shift in right away. All in all, definitely worth a year of fustration.
So, if anyone would like to see the Team 810 2003 Dashboard Program, I can probably upload it or put it on my server. The C++ backend is easy enough to understand (I'll put comments in), and that can be uploaded quickly. The Flash frontend you'll have to ask Dan about, as I know nothing about Flash (Dan is one of the two Flash Gods on 810
). Once again, he made the entire thing on a coach bus, so it can't be
too complicated, I think
.
When I get a chance to get the C++ (and Flash if Dan lets me
) up, I'll post a link, but till then, if you have any quick question, feel free to IM me (check signature for screenname).
Oh, and one last thing, I think the Dashboard Program is technically multiplatform, but I've never compiled the C++ backend on Linux/Mac, so I can't say for sure. I don't think there's anything Windows specific, but there probably is.