Dashboard Documentation

[EHaskins]

Lately I've seen a lot of questions regarding the dashboard packet/protocol. I've compiled my development notes into a document which may be useful to people writing dashboards from scratch.

It includes dashboard packet and camera communication documentation.

You can find it on CodePlex.

I will most likley be releasing updates to the project as I find errors and/or omissions.

[Robototes2412]

what port is this on?

[Joe Ross]

The ports are listed in Eric's documentation.

[Robototes2412]

how would you capture the image data from the network and show it in a standard GTKimage container?

[EHaskins]

The first step is to capture the raw jpeg data from the incomming data. How you do this depends on the language/tools you are using.

Once you have the raw data you have two options:
a. decode the jpeg in memory and set is as the image for the image control. This should be less than 10 lines of code, but you'll have to read the docs.
b. write the raw data to a file, and then point the image control to the image file. This will probably be more code than option a, but may be simpiler.

Option a will probably perform better, but option b may be easier.

[Robototes2412]

do you know how to do this in python?

[EHaskins]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Python. Maybe someone else here is.

[TheDominis]

I suggest looking into the WPILib\NetworkCommunication\FRCComm.h

I have reproduced it in this post.

It contains the struct that is passed along the network. You must swap intrinsic data type from big to little endian. You shouldn't have to swap byte arrays unless intrinsic data is converted to a byte array.

struct FRCCommonControlData{
	UINT16 packetIndex;
	union {
		UINT8 control;
		struct {
			UINT8 reset : 1;
			UINT8 notEStop : 1;
			UINT8 enabled : 1;
			UINT8 autonomous : 1;
			UINT8 fmsAttached:1;
			UINT8 resync : 1;
			UINT8 cRIOChkSum :1;
			UINT8 fpgaChkSum :1;
		};
	};
	UINT8 dsDigitalIn;
	UINT16 teamID;

	char dsID_Alliance;
	char dsID_Position;

	union {
		INT8 stick0Axes[6];
		struct {
			INT8 stick0Axis1;
			INT8 stick0Axis2;
			INT8 stick0Axis3;
			INT8 stick0Axis4;
			INT8 stick0Axis5;
			INT8 stick0Axis6;
		};
	};
	UINT16 stick0Buttons;		// Left-most 4 bits are unused

	union {
		INT8 stick1Axes[6];
		struct {
			INT8 stick1Axis1;
			INT8 stick1Axis2;
			INT8 stick1Axis3;
			INT8 stick1Axis4;
			INT8 stick1Axis5;
			INT8 stick1Axis6;
		};
	};
	UINT16 stick1Buttons;		// Left-most 4 bits are unused

	union {
		INT8 stick2Axes[6];
		struct {
			INT8 stick2Axis1;
			INT8 stick2Axis2;
			INT8 stick2Axis3;
			INT8 stick2Axis4;
			INT8 stick2Axis5;
			INT8 stick2Axis6;
		};
	};
	UINT16 stick2Buttons;		// Left-most 4 bits are unused

	union {
		INT8 stick3Axes[6];
		struct {
			INT8 stick3Axis1;
			INT8 stick3Axis2;
			INT8 stick3Axis3;
			INT8 stick3Axis4;
			INT8 stick3Axis5;
			INT8 stick3Axis6;
		};
	};
	UINT16 stick3Buttons;		// Left-most 4 bits are unused

	//Analog inputs are 10 bit right-justified
	UINT16 analog1;
	UINT16 analog2;
	UINT16 analog3;
	UINT16 analog4;

	UINT64 cRIOChecksum;
	UINT32 FPGAChecksum0;
	UINT32 FPGAChecksum1;
	UINT32 FPGAChecksum2;
	UINT32 FPGAChecksum3;

	char versionData[8];
};

[Radical Pi]

That is the robot to DS protocol, not the DS to Dashboard protocol. It looks like the status byte might be staying the same, but in terms of the error byte there is no indication of that in that code