RobotPreferences in SmartDashboard 2.0

[sarangmittal]

In our exploration of SmartDashboard 2.0, we noticed that SFX doesn't include RobotPreferences.

I was wondering if FRC was planning on adding RobotPreferences in an update sometimes soon.

If not, would it be terribly time consuming/difficult to write our own widget for RobotPreferences. We use RobotPreferences ALOT, so its pretty crucial that we have it.

Thanks.

[Ipiano]

I noticed the same thing, and likewise, we use it heavily; primarily to define our autonomous.

Our team was privileged to be a part of the control systems beta test, and, as the head programmer, I can say that the widget WAS implemented... or at least planned. The widget that existed didn't work very well. Additionally, there was the option to change widgets to different types after they were added, something that is stated as a feature in the tutorial on screenstepslive.

These two things lead me to believe that we do not have the final version for our use and that a new version will(hopefully) be released.

Until such time, the only thing I can suggest is to send a string variable to the SmartSashboard and then modify it on the dashboard and use a "Get" method to save it on the RobotPreferences in code.

--UPDATE--
A more viable workaround is running the old smartdashboard alongside the sfx dashboard with just the preferences widget visible. It works.

Also, I'm going to try writing a widget for it myself. All it needs to do is ftp the robot and modify/read the wpilib-preferences.ini file. If that goes anywhere I'll post it to GitHub

[byteit101]

Originally Posted by Ipiano

I noticed the same thing, and likewise, we use it heavily; primarily to define our autonomous.

Our team was privileged to be a part of the control systems beta test, and, as the head programmer, I can say that the widget WAS implemented... or at least planned. The widget that existed didn't work very well. Additionally, there was the option to change widgets to different types after they were added, something that is stated as a feature in the tutorial on screenstepslive.

These two things lead me to believe that we do not have the final version for our use and that a new version will(hopefully) be released.

Until such time, the only thing I can suggest is to send a string variable to the SmartSashboard and then modify it on the dashboard and use a "Get" method to save it on the RobotPreferences in code.

--UPDATE--
A more viable workaround is running the old smartdashboard alongside the sfx dashboard with just the preferences widget visible. It works.

Also, I'm going to try writing a widget for it myself. All it needs to do is ftp the robot and modify/read the wpilib-preferences.ini file. If that goes anywhere I'll post it to GitHub

Where is RobotPreferences mentioned? It is not in SFX as SFX is a re-write, and we have not yet added that control. That is the latest version, but we had to back out the "morph" command as it was too buggy to ship. (its just commented out in the fxml file if you want to play with it).

If you want to add robot preferences, you shouldn't need to manually do ftp, just grab it from the datacore. Look at the scheduler as its somewhat similar. Also feel free to send us a patch, we welcome it. If you encounter any issues, feel free to help document them.

[Ipiano]

I get it now!

I feel like a complete idiot right now.
I was expecting RobotPreferences to be implemented as they were in SmartDashboard 1.0, in a widget, not as part of the name-value pairs in the dataCore.

I'm extremely sorry for any confusion I may have caused in this topic.