So, who has a custom dashboard?

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by slavik262

As many of you know, I'm currently in the process of making one. I've ran into a roadblock though. After working with the UI for several weeks, I went today to test the networking only to find that FIRST had completely changed the protocol around. If anybody could get me up-to-date documentation on the dashboard protocol, I would be extremely grateful.

I don't believe it changed much... what are you thinking changed? I know we added in the error data that shows up on the dashboard and the made a distinction between high- and low-priority dashboard data. If you have any more direct questions about it, just PM me.

[slavik262]

They didn't completely change it around - that was me being a bit reactionary and frustrated that it changed when I went to test it. The user data used to be in the following order: User string (as in a string of text you could add), Error string, and then the rest of the user data. This is in contrast to the current setup with high-priority data, then the error string, then the low-priority data. I have it working (to my knowledge anyways - I still need to do some more testing with the robot) thanks to Eric Haskins and his documentation. You can check out my first release at the bottom of this page. There's a few bugs in the initial release that I noted on page 4 -they're already fixed and I'll have the next release out in a day or so.

[jhersh]

Originally Posted by slavik262

They didn't completely change it around - that was me being a bit reactionary and frustrated that it changed when I went to test it. The user data used to be in the following order: User string (as in a string of text you could add), Error string, and then the rest of the user data. This is in contrast to the current setup with high-priority data, then the error string, then the low-priority data.

The primary change was to rename the fields. Because user strings and user data are both just variable size data fields, we didn't think they should be named as though they would only work in those ways. Since the real difference was the priority of each field wrt to the error strings, we decided to name it as such. Then on the robot, we made it easier to send either strings or packed data to either field. Make sense?

What was the practical difference that impacted your code?

-Joe

[bladetech932]

We have a custom dashboard of which the main purpose is to reduce lag and increase the size of the vision

[tutkows1]

How do you make the custom dashboard look for the camera feed?

[Robototes2412]

should you be able to get the camera feed with just a specialized java swing image container?

[Joshuaal2000]

For my team, I am Using the Demo Dashboard as a base, but I have completely modified it to only contain info that our drivers want during the match, such as two bars to compare our what our drivers set for our kicking distance, to that of what the robot is currently set to kick at. This makes it simple for the drivers to see when the Kicker is in the correct position. We have Booleans for certain necessary features. We also display What state our Autonomous and Kicker state machines are currently in, Using enumerations from our C code.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Our custom Dashboard works great. We're using LabVIEW on the robot, so it was easy to make the data match up.

One wrinkle we added was to split the display into two tabs. One is for use during a match and the other has a lot of diagnostic information (like raw encoder counts and other sensor input).

I have also done this to my dashboard, but in a different fashion. Using Data sent from the robot, we have made an autonomous and a teleop tabs plus a developer tab for debugging. During the match, the tabs switch from auto to teleop instantaneously when the state of the game changes with no manual control needed. This allows us to display different data during each part of the match, and allows us to keep our auto tab uncluttered so we can have larger text and inidcators, so that the driving team can view it from their starting position. The developer page requires manual opening to view.

[Ziaholic]

We have a custom dashboard and a programmer that's diving into some more of the advanced features like animating shapes and creating custom indicators.

One thing that we haven't figured out completely yet is if it is possible to access the Teleop Elapsed Time without sending it from the 'bot. We're going to use this data to flash an indicator when we are approaching the final 20 seconds of the match.

Do I have to send that time from the 'bot, or is it already available via some local Dashboard/DriverStation variable that we haven't found yet?

[umangv620]

tried to make a custom dashboard, but got so confused on how to. i looked up some videos on frcmastery.com but they jump around from one series to the next, so i didnt get it.

[PIDman]

Ours isn't really custom, we just tweaked it a bit. We have an indicator to convert psi into kicking distance, it's really neat.

[pSYeNCe]

We have a (non-tested) custom dashboard for extra feedback, mostly. I wish I had more time with the robot, I would customize it a lot more than I did... Ah well. There's always the practice day before competition!

[PranavSathy]

We have a custom dashboard in C#, and it reciees packets via TCP/IP to display certain values like voltage, it shows a live camera feed AND it even records whatever images we got after a certain record packet is sent. It also has audio playback capability to play cool music during certian points of the match like a victory and game over music.

Below is the picture of our dashboard at startup

[Robototes2412]

can someone please send me a link to the protocol notes that FRC/WPI used to make the dashboard? I want to make my own dashboard in python/pyGtk, I am programming the robot in java.

[jspatz1]

We've done quite a bit of customizing. Bigger vision window, orientation compass, kicker strength indicator, status lights. Simplified the overall look for easy viewing. Pretty easy when using Labview to program.