Question about a rule

[EricWilliams]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The Dashboard is for display only. It has no way of communicating information back to the robot.

DIO values come from (or go to) pins on the Digital Sidecar on the robot. You can read (or write) them at any time without constraint. They will work whether the robot is in auto or teleop, and whether it is enabled or disabled.

The Driver Station software and Dashboard software are different. The bottom (smaller) window is the Driver Station software, and is REQUIRED to run during matches. The Dashboard is not necessary and can be replaced with custom software.

The Driver Station software has a Virtual DIO panel that is not read only. These are buttons that can be toggled by pressing on them. These can be set while the robot is DISABLED, and will remain in their state when the robot changes to Autonomous ENABLED. This means you can effectively use these Virtual DIO (not Read Only) as an autonomous mode selector.

These inputs do not come from the Digital Side Car and are read through a separate VI in the WPILib Dashboard palette.

Good luck!