Virtual Driver Station

[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/

[JesseK]

Oh snap!!! I just thought of a HUGE advantage to having this virtual DS.

Some times in the rush to get out of the pits and into the queue, we forget to charge our pneumatic system to full capacity. Since don't have power to the real DS in the queue area, having a virtual DS on the laptop we already bring to the field would allow us to charge our pneumatics in queue.

Quick question -- how does the virtual DS handle the data returning from the cRIO -- i.e. the small customizable packets received during a match?

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Quick question -- how does the virtual DS handle the data returning from the cRIO -- i.e. the small customizable packets received during a match?

To the best of my knowledge it handles it just like the real DS. If you have stuff that shows up on your DS LCD, you can see that in the Virtual DS as well (you can use F1 to toggle between the main DS screen and the secondary, custom screen). DS digital outputs that are controlled by the robot show up on the GUI, and anything else is dashboard data, which the Virtual DS sends to the Dashboard IP, so if you have your Dashboard connected you should see that work.

Right now the IPs that it uses are fixed (it expects the computer the DS is running on to be 10.x.y.5 and the Dashboard to be 10.x.y.6), but it is possible to assign BOTH of those IP addresses to the same laptop which means you can run the Virtual DS and your Dashboard on the same computer. See this page for some instructions on how to do this.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

Right now the IPs that it uses are fixed (it expects the computer the DS is running on to be 10.x.y.5 and the Dashboard to be 10.x.y.6),

Really? I have been running both on 10.1.25.6, no problem.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Really? I have been running both on 10.1.25.6, no problem.

Well, actually my software doesn't care, but I thought the CRIO would only send packets back to the 10.x.y.5 address. I could have sworn I saw this when testing, but maybe something else was goofed up. I guess I'll have to try it again with it set to some other IP.

[Joe Hershberger]

The cRIO will always reply to the first IP address it receives a DS packet from (until reboot). Perhaps when you tried it you didn't reboot the cRIO after changing the laptop IP.

-Joe

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Joe Hershberger

The cRIO will always reply to the first IP address it receives a DS packet from (until reboot). Perhaps when you tried it you didn't reboot the cRIO after changing the laptop IP.

Yeah, that's probably it. I'm sure I had the robot connected up to the real DS before trying the virtual DS.

[GeorgeMitsuoka]

This looks very cool. Can anyone answer this question: Is there any way to use the cRIO w/o the driver station (or virtual driver station)? I'm assuming the answer is 'no' as this could create a safety issue. The reason I'm asking is that we'd like to use the cRIO as a controller during the off season for an autonomous robot project and it would be better if we didn't have to tether it to a driver station or PC.

[Russ Beavis]

I'm fairly certain that you aren't limited to using the basic and advanced software frameworks. You should be able to use a "clean sheet" and design the software to do whatever you'd like. The benefits of the frameworks are obvious - easy DS communications, "functions" for teleop vs. autonomous, watchdog "petting", etc. - and you really should use them as a starting point but you can use a "clean sheet". You'll definitely want to borrow the "watchdog petting" software otherwise the FPGA will disable your outputs.

Speaking of the FPGA, it is probably completely locked down. But you should be able to generate your own TCP/IP or UDP packets of info when you're operating outside of a FIRST event, link to other networks, go fully autonomous...

Have fun!
Russ

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by GeorgeMitsuoka

This looks very cool. Can anyone answer this question: Is there any way to use the cRIO w/o the driver station (or virtual driver station)? I'm assuming the answer is 'no' as this could create a safety issue. The reason I'm asking is that we'd like to use the cRIO as a controller during the off season for an autonomous robot project and it would be better if we didn't have to tether it to a driver station or PC.

You hit it on the head. With an FRC image loaded, you can not run the cRIO independent of a DS of some sort.

You could load a non-FRC image, but this would be considered an advanced (and possibly unsupported) use case.

[Russ Beavis]

I probably should have added the same comments from Eric to my response. Basically -

Try whatever you want but if you try to shove more data through WiFi, the field will stop you (during FIRST competitions). And don't try to fool with the safety features in the FPGA and Ethernet communications packets since the field will stop that as well (also only during FIRST competitions).

Russ

[Burmeister #279]

Dave,
[note: didn't dl your program, not on my team machine] Have you thought about allowing the hotkeys such as stop and change color to be changed?

~Burmeister.