Smart Dashboard - What do you think?

[MattG_3165]

Paul,

I had an initial look at SmartDashboard yesterday and I really like the simplicity and ease of configuration, especially from the robot side. The static log() method makes it exceptionally easy to get data out of the robot and onto a dashboard, and I also really like the fact that the client needs no configuration changes when new inputs are added.

We don't have anyone on our team with labview experience, so we were leery about attempting to customize the default dashboard, and our attempts to run the zomB dashboard failed. Now that I've seen SmartDashboard, I am really hopeful that it will meet our needs - and I expect that it will work out quite well.

I don't have any bugs to report, but after first glance I can think of some feature requests.

-Data logging: Store all the incoming data points and write them to a log file for later analysis.

-Plotting/graphing of data points, especially time-based running plots. Maybe use something like JChart2D for this task.

-More widget types (compass pointer dials especially) would always be nice, and the ability to add static elements (labels, targeting overlays on video feed, etc.) to the dashboard would also be useful.

If I feel brave (my Java is rudimentary) I may see if I can add any of this stuff myself and send you a patch.

On the whole, SmartDashboard is a nice piece of work, and I'm excited to make full use of it this year.