Using a Keyboard on the Drivers Station

[kgzak]

Is it possible to use a keyboard on the drivers station and if so how would the computer recognize it? as a Joystick or what?
Thanks

[Alan Anderson]

The Driver Station only reads HID (joysticks, gamepads, and the like) devices and the Cypress PSoC for data to pass on to the robot.

A keyboard will be able to enable (F1) and disable (space) the robot, to activate the emergency stop (control-alt-enter, I think), and do whatever else Windows recognizes. You might be able to program a Dashboard to read the keyboard and pass information on to the robot for it to act on, but <R75> doesn't clearly permit you to do that during competition.

[kgzak]

Ok, thanks for the help.

[MaxMax161]

I once saw a team use a guitar hero controller to control their robot so I assume that <R75> allows other controllers and a keyboard would be included in that, however because you would need to use not WPI .VIs there might be a problem there.

Edit: I looked over the rules again and I don't see anything that would stop you from using the built in LabVIEW stuff and not the WPI .VIs.

As for using it on a technical side getting the keyboard to communicate with LabVIEW is easy but turning that input in to robot actions isn't as easy. There is a menu system under "connectivity" that holds all the .VIs you would need to connect anything from a mouse to a keyboard to a joystick to LabVIEW without using any WPI stuff. The only thing that could make your life harder is that LabVIEW interprets keyboard input as an array of characters with the last button pressed in the 0 index, 2nd to last in the 1 index, and so on. Good luck with whatever you choose.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by MaxMax161

I looked over the rules again and I don't see anything that would stop you from using the built in LabVIEW stuff and not the WPI .VIs.

The built in LabVIEW stuff expects to be running on a computer with a keyboard, not on a cRIO. Unless I'm overlooking something fundamental, it won't give you the ability to read the Driver Station's keyboard from the robot.

[JesseK]

Hmm, we need to work on a keyboard-to-joystick API during this next offseason then. Pushing buttons on a joystick is ridiculous when COTS items like THIS would make year-to-year robotics much more intuitive. After all, many robots spend more time driving off of the field than on it (such as robot demos, etc).

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Hmm, we need to work on a keyboard-to-joystick API during this next offseason then.

There are already several. They have been mentioned in other similar threads. Search the web for "virtual joystick" utilities.

[JesseK]

Thanks Alan. After looking into it, if the 'keyboard' mapped to 'joystick' functions that then went through the normal Driver's Station software (i.e. didn't try to go directly to the robot), I can't tell if that breaks <R75> or not since it's a 1:1 mapping and not a collation/redirection to the robot (similar to the way the HID drivers work).

I'll Q&A it.