Beta Teams: SmartDashboard 2.0

[NWChen]

Java beta tester here. If you haven't seen SD2.0/SFX yet, look at Joe's link.

What do you guys think of SmartDashboard 2.0 (or is it SmartDashboard FX, or SFX?).

I've heard it most frequently referred to as SFX. For debugging purposes it's better than SmartDashboard1.0: the record functionality, more widgets, being able to use (JavaFX, not browser) CSS to customize widgets, and multiple tabs (e.g. for SmartDashboard and for LiveWindow) make viewing data easier.

Based on your testing, are you planning to use it this season?

Yes, we think it'll speed up debugging, if not be more aesthetically pleasing on the Driver Station (if we choose to use it there).

What was your favorite feature(s)?

The record/playback functionality. We can play back data at any time. Something suggested by Dan Lavin on 694 was collecting data in teleop and using it for autonomous, which I know some teams have attempted but might be easier this year with the addition of record/playback.

Any issues teams should be aware of?

There were one or two nonfunctioning buttons (like the data source button) on the interface, and we had to run SFX from terminal

java -jar sfx.jar

to get some other functions working. Since this was beta, though, it'll probably be fixed by build season. It also may have been an error just on our platform, we only tested SFX on one laptop running Windows 7.

Did anyone try to make any custom widgets or plugins? Was it hard to learn JavaFX? Was there any documentation for making custom widgets or plugins?

Beyond using CSS to customize widgets, I don't know anyone who attempted to make a custom widget specifically for SFX. ScreenSteps links to a JavaFX CSS reference page and that's all.

Was the camera viewer more stable then the original SmartDashboard. Did anyone do any vision processing?

I'm not able to answer this, we didn't do any vision processing and I can't recall or find documentation on camera viewing in SFX.

Did anyone try running it on the classmate?

Our setup was an HP Probook 4540s, so I can't answer this either, sorry.

Is it stable when running for long periods of time?

Seems to be - at one point we had it running for about 45 minutes, so unlike SmartDashboard 1.0 it doesn't crash after a brief period of time.

For the beta testers, I'll throw out another question: Was Java 7 required for the new tools? It looks like some of the latest development JARs won't currently execute using Java 6.

Java 7 is required:
"The new dashboard requires a current version of Oracle Java 7 (minimum release 7u6) to be installed on your system to get JavaFX."

Hope that helped.