This sounds like a really stupid question, and it is. Quite simply, we can’t figure out how to use the SmartDashboard to input information into our program. Our SmartDashboard.putNumber() works perfectly fine, but when we try using the .getNumber() or .getBoolean(), or any of the gets, nothing happens. If we don’t set a default value, no value is set.
For printing on the SmartDashboard, we are simply using the methods in our code, and the corresponding widgets are automatically created.
You have to first put the value to the SmartDashboard before you can get its updated value. So, you call SmartDashboard.putNumber(“this is a number”, some_default_value), which causes the field to appear on the SmartDashboard. Then you can edit this number in the SmartDashboard GUI, and when you call SmartDashboard.getNumber(“this is a number”), it will return the updated value.