[apalrd]

As for the Dashboard, my experience was good.

It was very easy to use (with LabVIEW on both ends), and it was painless to create a packet definition ctl file and use it on both ends. I like the way you just feed it text and it spits the text out at the other end - that makes things nice and simple, as opposed to writing the TCP or UDP comm code. I expected it to give me the data I set at the other end, which it did, and I then wrote a tabbed interface (with a color scheme of black, yellow, and purple) around that. After I found how to change the background color of the VI, it made everything so much nicer. Only one problem I noticed: I had a hard time telling if I had lost comm with the robot, something that was valuable to me. If it lost comm, I could tell fairly quickly because the image would go away, but an indicator I created to check the error state of the get data VI would never go away (it seems that the get data VI is blocking and has not timeout, or if it did it was very long.). But everything else was fine, I was able to send a ton of data (all the analog sensors inputs, motor outputs for PID controlled devices, setpoints, shift states for the drive, kicker, and arm, drive ft/sec, highest speed since boot (ft/sec), and more without overloading anything. I also had a feature to save the first image of Autonomous to my flashdrive, and it didn't complain when my flashdrive wasn't plugged in, which was good.

As for the Driver Station, you already know my complaints. On the good side, it gave you feedback on the joystick buttons and Cypress inputs, something the 2009 DS never did (the 2008 and previous did through the Dashboard port), which was very helpful when debugging Cypress IO problems or checking for problems in the control box without booting up the robot. Although I never checked to see if there was a 1-line status like last year (although we just said "Woman Drivers") or a single indicator like the previous OI's, the Dashboard provided that functionality just as well.