Hey everyone,
I’m interested in working on a driver console as an off-season project and wanted to know what creative ways you utilize different components. Eventually I’d like to find some creative way to improve the driving experience and fabricate it over the next couple of months.
Pictures would be greatly appreciated, as it would make the explanations so much easier. 
Thanks for linking. That being said I’m more interested in what ideas you guys have/unique things on your driver console.
The most unique thing I’ve ever seen was done by 4451 in 2013 or 2014…I think.
They had a holographic HUD projected onto some plastic mounted perpendicular to the base control board. That way the drivers could watch the robot and see important information simultaneously. I’d like to see, or do that one myself someday.
Our driver-station this year featured a simple and yet very elegant control board. It had a custom arduino mega board that allowed us to not only send signals to the robot but also receive feedback to the control board through LEDs.
See http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1587556&postcount=3
Elegant indeed! I love the wood, although right now I’m looking towards aluminium and colored acrylic for the more modern look. I’ve seen a couple photos of 4451’s console, and I have to say it does look really sexy. I’m going to do some research on creating a HUD, whether it be on something like that or on a wearable like the Vuzix m300.
Keep in mind that any wearable the driver has that interfaces with the driver station would need to be plugged in either after autonomous or left on the driver station shelf and have the driver put in on after TeleOp begins.
Of course this is assuming that the rules around the driver station don’t change too much from this year to next.
I was considering keeping them on the shelf and putting them on as the game starts. Another thing I need to check on is the safety aspect during swapping.
I’m not quite sure, but I believe one team at the Smoky Mountain Regional attempted to make a miniature version of the primary manipulator of their robot this year as part of the drive station. It used encoders to record the physical position and send the position to the actual robot to move the main arm. Basically, they made a voodoo doll of their robot. I don’t think it was very successful for them, but it might be a really interesting concept to try for some subsystems.