Mac DriverStation?

[Bennett]

I was wondering if there is a 2012 driver station for mac, i thought i saw some teams using one at competition and was curious, thanks!

[androb4]

Teams are runnin the DS on a Windows operating system on a Mac machine using Boot Camp.

I'm pro-Mac, but I'm just wondering: Why? I know the DS is important, but you definitely don't need a Mac to run it (The classmate works, and PCs are cheaper.)

[gixxy]

They Should open source the DS so that all the OSes can run it.

@SuperNerd256: If you want something more powerful than the classmate, but the only other comp you have is a Mac, then what? The same goes for us with Linux.

@androb4 I wonder if I can do the same through VirtualBox on Linux. *Goes to Testing Bench*

[androb4]

Lol, yea it should work. You just have to configure the usb and ethernet ports

[Spectare]

The driver station is open source, it just requires LabView, which is not.
On Ubuntu, I have gotten the driver station to work in WINE(which I also know works on a mac through macports).
winetricks is broken at the moment, but as soon as it works I'll post my WINE configuration.

[Spectare]

Ok, WINE is being very problematic, I'll see if I can remember:

you will need vcrun6, all the richeds, richtx, maybe vbrun, probably dotnet30 (you will need dotnet40 and vc2010(2011?) to use the kinect, good luck with THAT), possibly some directx stuff, do NOT install msi2, and maybe wsh stuff.

[Spectare]

This is my exact wine configuration:

comdlg32ocx, vcrun2003(I should try updating, now that I have a newer wine version), allfonts, and windows version set to 7.

Huh, I thought there was more.

Come to think of it, the kinect stuff might work now that I am using wine 1.5

[vinnie]

Originally Posted by Spectare

The driver station is open source, it just requires LabView, which is not.
On Ubuntu, I have gotten the driver station to work in WINE(which I also know works on a mac through macports).
winetricks is broken at the moment, but as soon as it works I'll post my WINE configuration.

Where is the source? I want it! One idea of mine for an off-season project was to reverse engineer it and make a Linux version, but if it's open source, I don't need to reverse engineer the protocol from tcp dumps haha

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm pro-Mac, but I'm just wondering: Why? I know the DS is important, but you definitely don't need a Mac to run it (The classmate works, and PCs are cheaper.)

Just because?

103 uses an 11 inch MacBook Air. The classmates are...uh...less than desirable, at least in my opinion.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm pro-Mac, but I'm just wondering: Why? I know the DS is important, but you definitely don't need a Mac to run it (The classmate works, and PCs are cheaper.)

I suppose that if you were looking to buy a laptop with the sole purpose of being your DS, an Air would get on your list for the hardware (unibody construction, long-lasting battery, MagSafe cord to prevent trips to boost your Safety Award cred). Not saying it'd be everybody's choice.

(We used our programming mentor's daily-driver 15" (or was it 17"?) HP laptop as our driver station this year. Considering that it was in about eight pieces at one point at Championship, I'm not sure he'd let us repeat that.)

[ProgrammerMatt]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm pro-Mac, but I'm just wondering: Why? I know the DS is important, but you definitely don't need a Mac to run it (The classmate works, and PCs are cheaper.)

we use a mac mainly for battery life 6-7 hours is nice

[theawesome1730]

This is sort of an old thread now, but as Macs gain market share (11-12%) compared to windows, more and more teams are going to want to start using Macs to program and drive their robots natively through OS X. It would be beneficial in my opinion for NI to create a port of LabView that runs natively on Macs. Like others have said, they have great battery, they are small and light and for a MacBook Air, an i7 and 8gbs of RAM would do a heck of a job doing video processing to take load off of the cRio.

[linuxboy]

Originally Posted by vinnie

Where is the source? I want it! One idea of mine for an off-season project was to reverse engineer it and make a Linux version, but if it's open source, I don't need to reverse engineer the protocol from tcp dumps haha

I'm fairly sure the LabView source for the Driver Station isn't public, nor is the DS-FMS protocol or the DS-cRIO protocol. The dashboard source however, is public. If you want to work with someone on making a linux (and mac for that matter) version of the Driver Station I'd be happy to help (remember, it can't be used at competition).
- Oliver

[jtus]

Alexa is right we use a Macbook Air running bootcamp. We do all of our programing with it and use it for the driver station. One of the main reasons I chose the MBair is it runs all day ona single charge. Wirh the cassmate I could just make it thru a single round with the wait time to get on the field.