pic: The new driver station

[Tapoore]

Originally Posted by jimsmith2354

Yeew, those header pins are nasty - can you say protective cover needed...
The USBs will also need some retention means to keep them in place when a robot hits the wall. All the talk of writing your own Java is great - except for the novice and other teams with little programming support. All in all, the FIRST hardware and software gets better each year, so no worries here.

Don't worry. There is a metal/ plastic cover in the works. Also, the header pins are going to be at a right angle to how they are now. This will allow connections to be made from the side instead of the top.

Originally Posted by richardmcc2

From what they said at the mentor info session, a dashboard computer can be connected via one of the USB ports, and there was a certain packet size that could be sent bidirectionally between the control station and the laptop.

The lower of the two Ethernet ports is for connecting to a laptop dashboard. It can also be used to "daisychain" several Driver Stations together so they can use the same WAP. The USB ports are only inputs for joysticks/ wheels/ gamepads etc. I don't have any info about the amount of info available through the dashboard port however...