Driver Interface

[BradAMiller]

I believe that connecting another device to the 2nd ethernet port on the cRIO is legal provided that you can come up with a switch that runs off robot power. You should check the rules yourself to be sure.

Given that, I'd expect that the cRIO might have trouble doing image processing from two cameras at the same time depending on what operations your're performing. The problem with doing that is that the AxisCamera class is currently a singleton, meaning that it assumes that there is only a single camera connected.

It might be that this can be changed in an update so that multiple cameras can be supported or it might be something that you can look at.

As for the question of modifying the dashbaord program... the source code is available as a LabVIEW application. You can modify it as needed. You have to be careful to keep the data in sync between the robot and dashboards ends. You can look at both samples to see how this works.

[James Dempsey]

For those of you using NetBeans as an IDE. Create a new project, go to samples, then Java FRC, then pick DashboardExample(possibly slightly out of order). The methods used there will interface with the Dashboard which I believe is LabView based. The basic code supplied there should give you some visual feedback when the driver station is set to tel-op with your analog, digital, io stuff(if I remember correctly). One of the other programmers on my team will be posting that details this code in a tank drive type robot. You can also look at the example code that FIRST provided for dealing with target recognition. It is example code that is used for recognizing Lunacy targets but you should get the general idea of how the AxisCamera is used and how it displays images on the driver station. Hope this helps any and all who are looking for help dealing with the Dashboard. Keep a lookout for a post that has example code that we have prepared for the forums.

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James D

[drakesword]

sort of out of topic.

we updated our dashboard and now only the lower panel shows up. is this normal or do we have a problem?

[James Dempsey]

That is a problem. If you had this after running code, then you may have a coding error which may end up causing the dashboard to not appear. However, the more likely case is that there was an error during your last install. Did you by any chance use the update installer or did you do an entire install of the WBILib and Dashboard combined?

[Greg McKaskle]

Just to clarify, the driver station is closed, but can run and communicate to a locally running dashboard that defaults to running on the upper portion of the screen, or communicating to a remote dashboard. These dashboards can indeed be written in any language you like. I'm not sure what templates are out there, but the LV sample code wizard will produce the source for the default dashboard.

To launch a custom dashboard, either name it the same and place it in the same location as the default (Program Files\FRC Dashboard\Dashboard.exe) -- I think that is the location. Another option is to modify the All Users\Documents\FRC DS Data Storage.ini and set the DashboardCmdLine to point to your new EXE.

Greg McKaskle

[whytheheckme]

Originally Posted by BradAMiller

I believe that connecting another device to the 2nd ethernet port on the cRIO is legal provided that you can come up with a switch that runs off robot power. You should check the rules yourself to be sure.

Given that, I'd expect that the cRIO might have trouble doing image processing from two cameras at the same time depending on what operations your're performing. The problem with doing that is that the AxisCamera class is currently a singleton, meaning that it assumes that there is only a single camera connected.

It might be that this can be changed in an update so that multiple cameras can be supported or it might be something that you can look at.

As for the question of modifying the dashbaord program... the source code is available as a LabVIEW application. You can modify it as needed. You have to be careful to keep the data in sync between the robot and dashboards ends. You can look at both samples to see how this works.

Might it be more viable to simply write code to pass the packets from the camera directly through to the DS/dashboard? Or would this utilized too much bandwidth?

[drakesword]

The cmd line in the ini file was blank. I tried setting it to "C:\Program Files\FRC Dashboard\Dashboard.exe" But it still wont come up OR it may be comming up minimized. the update disables alt-tab so i cannot bring it up

EDIT

Scratch the disabled alt tab it does work its just not launching the software

EDIT

Figured it out . . . gotta double backslash the commands
"C:\\Program Files\\FRC Dashboard\\Dashboard.exe"

[James Dempsey]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

Might it be more viable to simply write code to pass the packets from the camera directly through to the DS/dashboard? Or would this utilized too much bandwidth?

I haven't calculated it but I would think that passing the data stream directly to the dashboard would be a feasible option that doesn't eat up the bandwidth. However, I may be wrong since the camera feed is a direct stream of jpgs(if I am not mistaken). This may result in a large consumption of bandwidth due to the quantity and quality of the jpgs but I would assume that FIRST designed this to not eat up your bandwidth.

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James D

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

Might it be more viable to simply write code to pass the packets from the camera directly through to the DS/dashboard? Or would this utilized too much bandwidth?

This is essentially what the video to dashboard server on the cRIO does. The JPEGs from the camera are not recompressed... they are simply forwarded on.