Team 4095 Presents: iPhone Driver Station!

[Chiller]

I present to you a FULLY FUNCTIONING iPhone driver station!

Right now it is a late beta stage, everything does work, Enabling, Disabling, auto, teleop, joysticks, buttons, accelerometer joystick and the camera!

We have successfully controlled our robot with my iPhone without the need of the FRC driver station!

This will be fun to use since you can just pull your phone out and turn your robot on and boom robot control at your fingertips instantly!

This will be released to the app store soon once I make some minor safety upgrades such as if you drop your phone the robot will disable.

I might add in the ability to connect to the main phone controlling with another phone via bluetooth and use the second phone as a secondary joystick!

Here are some images:

[czielinski]

That looks really awesome! Is Android in the works as well?

[who716]

WOW! should be a lot of fun!!

[Chiller]

Originally Posted by czielinski

That looks really awesome! Is Android in the works as well?

Unfortunately no since I do not have an android device...

[Charles Boehm]

Very cool! This would be an awesome tool for demos or sponsor events!

[Mike Ounsworth]

That's awesome!!

I'm guessing it connects directly to the robot's wifi and then sends its data directly by socket?

[yash101]

Does this require any application-specific code on the cRIO side? I wouldn't be surprised if this requires the programmers to add a socket server to create a new protocol for communication

[Chiller]

Originally Posted by yash101

Does this require any application-specific code on the cRIO side? I wouldn't be surprised if this requires the programmers to add a socket server to create a new protocol for communication

Nope you do not need to add ANYTHING!

It connects just like how the FRC Driver Station does! Joysticks are implemented the same way.

Also no implementation for the camera it is all independent and everything you need is in the app!

[Mike Ounsworth]

Originally Posted by Chiller

Nope you do not need to add ANYTHING!

It connects just like how the FRC Driver Station does! Joysticks are implemented the same way.

Sweet! I would love to see how you're doing that. Are you making the source public?

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Mike Ounsworth

Sweet! I would love to see how you're doing that. Are you making the source public?

Having implemented something similar in the past, I would personally be hesitant about releasing the source. There are enough hints around on the internet and good enough tools out there that it doesn't take too long to make it work, and you can cause a lot of damage (robot out of control and no quick way to stop it) if you aren't careful.

The robot listens on a specific UDP port for packets with everything it needs from the DS.

[alexander.h]

If it's an iPhone app, I would assume it would work on an iPad as well, right? An iPhone is nice, but for controlling the robot, from my point of view, the larger the screen, the better. By the way, nice job!

[Mike Ounsworth]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

Having implemented something similar in the past, I would personally be hesitant about releasing the source. There are enough hints around on the internet and good enough tools out there that it doesn't take too long to make it work, and you can cause a lot of damage (robot out of control and no quick way to stop it) if you aren't careful.

I've heard a lot of arguments both ways for open source vs closed source but "don't touch it you'll hurt yourself" is a new one.

Mapping out all the driver station protocols by Wireshark is a lot of work and I respect that. The giddy child in me was hoping that someone who's done it would share their findings so we can all benefit. I'm curious more than anything, and won't have access to a cRIO till the fall so I can't map it out myself .

Good work on the app by the way! I look forward to trying it out!

[Whippet]

Awesome! Any chance for iOS 6 compatibility?

[Dominick Ferone]

im guessing all you would need to do is select the router for team xxxx and then open the app and your good to go? I wouldn't want my students knowing about it haha, i feel like they might fool around to much, but i can't wait to play with it. Can you give us an ETA on when to expect it.

[Chiller]

Originally Posted by Dominick Ferone

im guessing all you would need to do is select the router for team xxxx and then open the app and your good to go? I wouldn't want my students knowing about it haha, i feel like they might fool around to much, but i can't wait to play with it. Can you give us an ETA on when to expect it.

I won't have access to our cRio till tuesday so I still need to test out the analog and digital IO. I still have to look over all of the communication to make sure that all enabling and disabling features are working flawlessly.

Im hoping for it to be out on the market (iPhones only 7.1) within the next 2-3 weeks!

I will make it compatible for iPads soon but first I want to get the core functionality down.