Virtual Driver Station

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Kingofl337

I found two bugs in the .5 version of the Virtual DS software. After detecting my robot it displayed the team number as 0111!?

Yup, oops, sorry about that. Fixed. Incidentally, I created a cRIO simulator and I did test it with different team numbers, but now realized that my simulator didn't verify the correct team number was being received . Good catch.

When I plugged in a Logitech Dual Action GamePad and started the software it gave an error and would not detect the game pad.

Yeah, I saw this on Thursday night when another mentor fired it up on his Vista laptop (I only have XP machines and it doesn't happen on those). It's not a defect in my code - it's in the wxWidgets library that's used. I'll need to look into how to fix it. However, it doesn't prevent it from working. It actually detects the joystick just fine, it just can't read the name of the stick. So, in the joysticks dropdown you'll see a blank line, which is your joystick. Not ideal but at least it works. I also need to confirm if this happens with all joystick types or just Logitech.

Additionally, I reworked the application focus safety feature. Now, it can detect the spacebar or ESC key even when the VirtualDS does not have focus. So, it no longer disables the robot when you move the mouse out of the window. This is quite an improvement I think. Now, if you go to another window, as soon as you hit space or ESC it will still disable the robot. The downside is it disables any time spacebar is hit - even if you're filling in one of the label fields in the DS. This is a good thing I think, but a little quirky.

New version here:
http://www.pier13.com/projects/frc/virtualds/

[Tom Bottiglieri]

This tool has been super useful to us. We killed our DS at the regional and still haven't gotten a replacement. Thanks.

We've put a bunch of software dev and drive hours on the vDS, and everything seems to run smoothly.

There is one issue where after a while of use, the robot will switch between enabled and disabled mode (at least on the UI) at about 5Hz. We have to reboot the cRIO to fix it.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

This tool has been super useful to us. We killed our DS at the regional and still haven't gotten a replacement. Thanks.

We've put a bunch of software dev and drive hours on the vDS, and everything seems to run smoothly.

I'm really glad to hear that it has been working for you. I have been curious if anyone was actually using it

There is one issue where after a while of use, the robot will switch between enabled and disabled mode (at least on the UI) at about 5Hz. We have to reboot the cRIO to fix it.

Interesting. I'll have to see if I can get some extended time with our robot to attempt to reproduce this.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Would it be possible for this to talk to FMS Light? We are doing some tricky things with some hard timed loop, and I want to make sure our code will run in a competition environment. I am 99% sure it will be fine, but Murphy can always find that 1%.

If not, would it be possible to add controls to the GUI select alliance color? We pull that data from the DS object in WPILib. Right now the vDS returns kRed.

[Kingofl337]

Good Call Tom, I think toggle would be better then having to use FMSLight.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Would it be possible for this to talk to FMS Light? We are doing some tricky things with some hard timed loop, and I want to make sure our code will run in a competition environment. I am 99% sure it will be fine, but Murphy can always find that 1%.

If not, would it be possible to add controls to the GUI select alliance color? We pull that data from the DS object in WPILib. Right now the vDS returns kRed.

Yes, interoperability with FMS is something I had planned. I had actually decoded the FMS protocol first to produce an FMS-like program that would link up with any DSes it found rather than having to type in team numbers, so adding support should be straightforward.

In the meantime, however, I'll look into adding a toggle to select alliance color and position (though I'm guessing position isn't that useful to anyone since it has no bearing on where your robot is on the field).

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

Yes, interoperability with FMS is something I had planned. I had actually decoded the FMS protocol first to produce an FMS-like program that would link up with any DSes it found rather than having to type in team numbers, so adding support should be straightforward.

In the meantime, however, I'll look into adding a toggle to select alliance color and position (though I'm guessing position isn't that useful to anyone since it has no bearing on where your robot is on the field).

Thank you. This tool is quickly becoming more valuable to me than the real hardware. I know I'll still be using it once our new DS comes in.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

In the meantime, however, I'll look into adding a toggle to select alliance color and position (though I'm guessing position isn't that useful to anyone since it has no bearing on where your robot is on the field).

OK, I posted a new version that lets you use Ctrl-C to toggle the alliance color. It's not the best implementation but it was something that I could do quickly to try to meet your needs. One problem is that there's no feedback on the GUI of which color you had selected, and the color choice is not saved between restarts (it always starts up as Red). I'll work on making it more user-friendly eventually but hopefully this lets you do some of your testing at least.

Let me know if it works for you guys. Thanks!

New version here, as usual:
http://www.pier13.com/projects/frc/virtualds/