Dashboard-Driver Station Help Please

[Abrakadabra]

Thanks Joe - While we're on the subject of custom dashboards, may I ask a question?

Is there a good tutorial this year on how to write a custom Dashboard using LabView? I usually stick to text-based programming, and I will be the first to admit that I'm not that proficient in LabView, but I've used it enough to know my way around.

Last year, I tried to build a custom dashboard using LabView, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to create the custom data cluster that I needed on the LabView side. The C++ packager side was no problem, but on the LabView side, I kept getting errors when trying to create a new cluster type (sorry, I can't remember the exact specifics, but I think it was some kind of permission error that wouldn't let me update an existing library or something?). In any case, the tutorials I was able to find just sort of glanced over that step, as if it was extremely simple and done every day, but try as I might, I had no success. A nice step-by-step tutorial that includes all the details would be very helpful to us LabView novices that really only want to use LabView to create a dashboard and then go back to what we know best - text only! .

Thanks!

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by Abrakadabra

Thanks Joe - While we're on the subject of custom dashboards, may I ask a question?

Is there a good tutorial this year on how to write a custom Dashboard using LabView? I usually stick to text-based programming, and I will be the first to admit that I'm not that proficient in LabView, but I've used it enough to know my way around.

Last year, I tried to build a custom dashboard using LabView, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to create the custom data cluster that I needed on the LabView side. The C++ packager side was no problem, but on the LabView side, I kept getting errors when trying to create a new cluster type (sorry, I can't remember the exact specifics, but I think it was some kind of permission error that wouldn't let me update an existing library or something?). In any case, the tutorials I was able to find just sort of glanced over that step, as if it was extremely simple and done every day, but try as I might, I had no success. A nice step-by-step tutorial that includes all the details would be very helpful to us LabView novices that really only want to use LabView to create a dashboard and then go back to what we know best - text only! .

Thanks!

I recommend the video that Ben put together last year: http://www.lvmastery.com/TipJar2009-02-10

[sircedric4]

Thanks everyone for their help. I appreciate that the dashboard was made to be customized, but I think that there's a fundamental assumption in the way examples have been approached for the new control system.

Quite frankly, in our team I do not have any students that are really interested in programming. The teams I have been on have been small, and in our area most of the kids are much more interested in the actual hands on and mechanism stuff of robot building. I am able to convince one or two a year to help me "kluge" together enough code to get the robot to do the basics of what we want. The interest just isn't there on this aspect.

In the previous years on the previous control system, there was a simple example of how to handle every input, digital and analog, and if you didn't want to code you could assume some basic functionality out of the default code and you could wire your robot accordingly and it would work. I had assumed that the same functionality would be in the examples provided for the new control system. That was one reason I was getting snippy about having to go into the other *.cpp files and fix them. I had assumed they had been tested with the default system and everything would function.

For those teams with awesome programmers, the default code doesn't last an evening before they customize it and do really cool stuff with it. But for those of us without the experience and more importantly the student interest on this one facet, the fact is having a sample to start from that functions right away is of immeasurable value. We're doing as I tell the students, "the monkey see, monkey do" method of programming which doesn't work unless we have good examples.

I apologize for the high expectations, I'm just showing a different viewpoint from a younger team. Your help has been awesome and very gracious. Thanks again. I imagine you'll see me some more as we try to fight our way through encoders a little later.

[jhersh]

I hope you don't find that all of the examples are "non-functional" or at least non-expectation-meeting. I believe that the Dashboard is a special case that requires heavy customization to be truly useful. Encoders and many other aspects of the system a pretty straight forward and as such should function out of the box. If you have any trouble with other examples, please continue to let us know so that we can continue to improve the experience for everyone.

-Joe