Dashboard Viewer

[Khalicl13]

I have recently became interrested in developing Windows applications and and I thought about how I can apply it to my robotics club. One way I thought of using it was to make a Dashboard Viewer that displays the data from the robot and operator interfaces.
I know that there are some people who have already created such programs. I was just wondering has anyone else attempted to create such a program. If so, I'd like to get in contact with you about creating a Dashboard Viewer.
My goal is to create a more customizable version of the Dashboard Viewer. Wish me luck.

[Matt Leese]

I did one in C/C++ back in 2000. It worked pretty well and I believe some people had some luck with it. In general most people found Dashboard Viewers to be unneeded but I'm sure some people found them useful. I know that Nate Smith did a version in Visual Basic.

My program, including source code, can be found at
http://www.bcpl.net/~mleese/dashboard.html

I did my Dashboard Viewer in two separate components. One was the graphical interface and the other was the library for reading from the dashboard port. I tried my best to abstract out the library for the interface as much as possible. The GUI is in C++ built with MFCs (because it was fast and I wanted a quick GUI). The library is written in straight C. They both have a dependency on the Win32 library. Someone (I forget their name but probably have it around somewhere) was kind enough to provide Java bindings for the library. That's not included with the source code above but I have it sitting on my harddrive if you're interested.

If you want a technical description of what I developed, feel free to ask. I can walk you through most of it as it isn't terribly complex. It does however use both Serial Port programming and Multithreading (the multithreading is done fairly badly but I haven't updated it since I learned better ). Anyway, I hope some of this helps.

Matt

[Tom Schindler]

Originally posted by Matt Leese
In general most people found Dashboard Viewers to be unneeded but I'm sure some people found them useful.

We needed to use a dashboard program to view the position of our arm... when we were wedging with the bridge, we could have a button that moved our arm to a specific position.. but in order to set taht position we needed to have the dashboard there to view the position. It was very helpful... muhc better than doing a debug within the program

Tom

[Khalicl13]

Thanks for the quick response. I thought that I wouldn't get anything for a couple of days. thanx.
I'll be sure to contact some of you in a few days right after I get finished with my finals. I know that there are some really good dashboard viewers out there. Instead of displaying the data in terms of numbers, my goal is to eventually replace them with graphics such as the positrion of an arm or a voltage meter that is supplied to the drill motor or the exact position of the joysticks.
Eventually, I hope this makes some of the teadious tasks of calibrating joysticks and the Victors much easier.

Well, anyway, this will be among my tasks to do over the summer. I will be sure to contact some of you sometime next week.
And again, Thanks.

[Nate Smith]

Yep, I made one...more specifically, I made a OCX that can be used in Visual Basic, VC++(or so I've heard), and just about anywhere else that supports ActiveX controls...I'm almost certain I've still got a copy of it around here somewhere...just a word of warning, it hasn't been tested with the 2001 control system, not that it should make a difference...my understanding of the changes to the dashboard for 2001 from 2000 was that they just changed one of the values returned (Port 1 X rather than Port 1 Wheel)

Nate

[Ameya]

Originally posted by Nate Smith
Yep, I made one...more specifically, I made a OCX that can be used in Visual Basic, VC++(or so I've heard), and just about anywhere else that supports ActiveX controls...I'm almost certain I've still got a copy of it around here somewhere...just a word of warning, it hasn't been tested with the 2001 control system, not that it should make a difference...my understanding of the changes to the dashboard for 2001 from 2000 was that they just changed one of the values returned (Port 1 X rather than Port 1 Wheel)

Nate

Could you post the source for the ocx file?

[mccullocht]

Actually, I'm the one who wrote the bindings for the dashboard in java, so if you're interested in that, just email me (I think my email address is shown on this thing or something) and I can send it to you. I wrote an interface between Matt Leese's C library and Java, and then wrote a java wrapper class. The interface is slightly (very) obtuse, and I'm planning on rewriting it in native java. I also plan on writing a java class library of UI widgets for displaying different feedback from the robot in different ways. Again, if you're interested, just email me.

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Ameya


Could you post the source for the ocx file?

Assuming that I can find the CD I put it on, sure...let me see what I can find...

[Nate Smith]

hmmm, you can't add a file attachment when you're editing a post, so here's the code...i think i completed any changes I was making to it...I do see that the code is updated for the 2001 port format change...let me know what you find out...