Running Smartdashboard without cRIO/robot?

[Joe Ross]

There is a completely new version of SmartDashboard coming out this year, based on JavaFX. Everything below is based on the old SmartDashboard, but probably also applies to SmartDashboard 2.0 (or SmartDashboardFX, not sure what the correct name is).

You can start up Smartdashboard and have it connect to a different ip address by specifying it on the command line. For example: java -jar smartdashboard.jar 127.0.0.1

The robot normally functions as a Network Tables server, so you need a replacement server. Network Tables is the network library that SmartDashboard uses. You should be able to use the files in sunspotfrcsdk\desktop-lib to make a java program that runs a network tables server, although I've never done it. There are instructions for making a client program here: http://wpilib.screenstepslive.com/s/...client-pc-side You would have to extend them to make a server.

If you have LabVIEW, it's really easy to make a Network Tables server, just drop the NT Server Vi on a new VI, and run.

The 2014 beta java software contains a tool called Outline Viewer. It can operate as either a client or a server and lets you view and manipulate Network Tables variables.

Originally Posted by otherguy

I've never tried myself, but you should be able to pull out the SmartDashboard and NetworkTable classes from wpilib.

The source code is included in the sunspotfrcsdk folder if you have installed the FRC java plugins from 2013. Sources are zipped here on a windows machine:

%HOMEPATH%\sunspotfrcsdk\lib\wpilibj.src.zip

They should be located at the following locations respectively:
edu/wpi/first/wpilibj/smartdashboard
edu/wpi/first/wpilibj/networktables/

Alternatively, you could just include the whole wpilib jar file in your java desktop application. The following should get you everything you need:

import edu.wpi.first.wpilibj.smartdashboard.SmartDashboard;

This uses Java ME networking, you need to use the desktop version I posted above.