Driver Station recommendation

[whitetail]

As a team we decided that cameras on the robot are going to play an important part in FRC Stronghold. Also last year was our rookie year and we just made a basic drive station to use. This year we want to make a nicer one. I just have a few question for you involving the Drive station.

1. What brand of laptop do you prefer for the drive station?


2. What operating systems do you prefer for the drive station?


3. What graphics cards do you prefer for the drive station?

If you have any other things that would be critical to a great drive station just put it in the Thread. Thanks

[mandrews281]

Two suggestions:

1. Get a touch screen. We added one last year and it was very handy for touching the controls (requires Windows 8 or higher).

2. Make sure you get a wired ethernet port. At Palmetto last year, a team was using a tablet that only had wireless. I pointed it out to them and they had to make a run to OfficeMax for a USB to ethernet adaptor.

We use an i7 lenovo flex 2. Works like a champ.

[Sperkowsky]

ThinkPad

Windows

Gpu doesn't matter

The biggest thing is that it has an ssd. That it's reliable and that it's durable.

ThinkPads always fufill the latter two.

We just got our new Driver Station Laptop. A refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad t420 i5 4gbs of ram and a 320gb hdd. We then took it and put in an ssd.

Total price $320 for everything.

Gotta live micro center.

[GreyingJay]

"What works best" is going to be entirely up to your drive team. Watch them closely while they are practicing and look for ways to optimize the experience. For example, touch screens can be very handy, but can also be very distracting if you need to look down to see where your fingers are.

Make sure whatever you set up is easy to set up, connect, and take down afterward.

[James Juncker]

For a computer for a drive station, I would recommend Dell or Lenovo.
A touch screen can be very nice but if it's a budget issue its not necessary.
One addition I have is a large enough screen to use in case you plan on using cameras on the robot, as a 2" camera window is quite inconvenient.
Also for an OS you really need to go with Windows, if not for comparability then for its excellent reliability (I'm looking at you Ubuntu and your random errors)

I could say make sure it has at least an Nvidia 970m gpu but Gpu isn't needed as you won't be processing much data that the cup won't be able to handle on its own. And check if it has Ethernet on the laptop itself, or make sure to pick up a usb-a to female Ethernet converter

Beyond just computer you should also decide if you want to drive your robot around using joysticks(my personal favorite) or a gamepad aka controller. This comes down to driver preference and should really come from if they can drive it or not.

If you are attaching it all to a board grab some heavy duty hook and loop (Velcro) to secure the computer to its surface and some paint to make the board look nice. If you don't have enough sub out ports on the laptop then I would recommend getting a usb hub combined with an Ethernet jack.