Arduino Leonardo ++ Driver Station Output

[wt200999]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I think the issue is there really isn't an obvious way to have the robot talk to a device connected to the computer.

The intent with the new driverstation is to support HID gamepads as the 'obvious' way to communicate from the robot to the driver station, and a HID compatible microcontroller or a gamepad can be used to get custom input/output. This year's WPILib API has functions to set outputs to the driver station which is communicated directly to the joystick.

The HID compatible Arduinos, like the Leonardo++, will work for inputs by default, however the libraries do not have support for HID outputs, meaning out of the box you would not be able to set indicator LEDs. The underlying software would need to be modified to add this support.

The LaunchPad in the kit can be loaded with prebuilt binaries to support input and outputs out of the box. So you can connect it to the driver station and hook both buttons and indicator LEDs to the board, and use the WPILib API to turn on/off the LEDs. The only downside is that if you want to edit the code the only option is the full eclipse based Code Composer. The Arduino forked environment for the LaunchPad (Energia) doesn't work for HID.

Originally Posted by jman4747

I wonder if NI VISA would recognize a USB to RS-232 converter as a com port. If it did you could send strings to the device using the smart dash based on values you get of the from the robot.

VISA will recognize the USB to RS-232 converter properly so this approach would work. You just need to be careful with enumerating the correct port (and make sure the Smart Dashboard ports aren't blocked at the event).