Non joystick control?

[shuhao]

is it possible to use keyboard to drive? We have some parts but no joystick at the moment.

[Mark McLeod]

Can't use a keyboard, but you could use most USB game controllers if you have one from home you could borrow.

It's possible to rig up custom controls through the Cypress board, but doubtfully worth the trouble.

Autonomous could be run without joysticks, but not controlled by a driver.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Has anyone ever played around enough to see (or just knows) if the driver station/FMS framework could support sending keyboard info/events to the robot, such as by modifying (or writing a new one from scratch) the driver station runtime? I assume that as soon as the driver station software is modified its no longer legal, but just curious.

[WizenedEE]

Originally Posted by compwiztobe

Has anyone ever played around enough to see (or just knows) if the driver station/FMS framework could support sending keyboard info/events to the robot, such as by modifying (or writing a new one from scratch) the driver station runtime? I assume that as soon as the driver station software is modified its no longer legal, but just curious.

The drive station isn't open source. I think there have been some open source, team generated duplicates of it that could accomplish that, but it would be easier to write the code on the dashboard to use a free port to send the data.

[Sunstroke]

Originally Posted by compwiztobe

Has anyone ever played around enough to see (or just knows) if the driver station/FMS framework could support sending keyboard info/events to the robot, such as by modifying (or writing a new one from scratch) the driver station runtime? I assume that as soon as the driver station software is modified its no longer legal, but just curious.

The new SmartDashboard will support extensions. As long as it does not break any explicit rules (none that I know of), it will be possible to create a custom widget which reads keyboard values and sends it back to the robot using the new NetworkTable protocol. All in all, that means approximately 20 lines of code (besides the boiler-plate class definition), and a few on the robot depending on what control you want.

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by RyanCahoon

This software that allows mapping of keystrokes to a virtual joystick device.

Works great with modular USB numpads.

--Ryan

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by RyanCahoon

Works great with modular USB numpads.

--Ryan

That's a neat way to do it. Unfortunately, that particular one is an unsigned driver or some such thing so 64 bit Windows is unhappy with it. On further Googling I found this which appears to have the same functionality and at the very least installs successfully on 64 bit Windows. No guarantees about it working yet, as I don't have a robot or any games to test it on.