I know there are many teams that use multiple laptops for driver stations. How do you do that? I’ve been looking around but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.
We run the wpilib update on each of the laptops. We did have some difficulty connecting with one machine, so we installed the vscode pieces on it as well.
Is there some specific problem your having?
One possible issue to be aware of - the RoboRio will only connect to one driver station at a time. We still load the driver station software on all of our team laptops, but it can get confusing if you’re using one to program the robot and another to drive it - don’t have the driver station software running on both at the same time! Odds are, it’ll connect to the one you don’t want it connected to, and lock you out of the other. If that happens, just close the software and reboot the RoboRio.
What we do is create a “master” computer on the first day of season. This master computer has all of the updated firmware, development tools, etc that we will need throughout the whole season. Then we create an ISO of the entire drive and copy it to our other computers. That ensures that every computer has the updated and correct software and firmware.
There isnt a specific problem that we have, i was just wondering if i could switch the driver station to a new laptop that runs better and processes faster. The thing now is i dont know how to get a driver station on the newer laptop. (The new laptop is completely new and is free of any programs that i may have to download i.e. eclipse)
All you really need to turn a plain old laptop into a driver station is the 2019 FRC Update Suite. You can find installation instructions on the control system documentation site.
1 Like
You can switch it over. We have a laptop that has the driver station and the NI tools to image the roboRIO etc. on it, and some people sit with that and the drive board to enable/disable. Then we have another computer that doesn’t have the driver station (to prevent accidentally opening the DS on both and locking it up as described above) that we actually edit the code on. We keep both connected to the robot and it makes the process smooth (edit, upload, enable) without having to switch between VS Code and the DS.