New Driver Station information

Technical Control System
1

I put together a presentation about the new classmate Drivers Station hardware and software. It’s posted on the FIRST forums: http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=13368

Hopefully this answers a lot of people’s questions about the new Drivers Station.

2

Thanks Joe!

I’m glad to see the cRIO Image version display and Phil Malone’s Pinger status as part of it.

The built-in practice match is nice too.

I hope the space bar disable is itself disabled during a real field match.
I’d hate to be one of the drivers who lean on that accidentally…

I can hear the lead queuer’s new warning call: “Start your Driver Stations now!”

3

Thanks Joe, Looks Great!

4

Looks like it has potential.

Can someone confirm that this should be the spare battery? (I imagine some teams will opt to have a spare on the cart for fear that they’ll get paired with That Team That Didn’t Get The Memo About Battery Life. You know that team.)

5

When connected to the FMS, enable and disable buttons are hidden along with team station selector. The field is in charge of robot state, and the keys do nothing.

There is one exception to this that is pending approval and relates to joysticks.

As for the shout out. I’d like to join in and thank the beta testers from this year and last. Many of the DS improvements are directly swiped from utilities they had written, and of the best features are there because they asked/insisted they be put in. Now that the info is getting a wider audience, I’d encourage others to offer their suggestions and feedback on the FIRST forums.

Greg McKaskle

6

That’s a 6 cell battery, while the classmate normally comes with a 4 cell. I believe that is the replacement, but you know how the GDC is with replacement/spare/upgrade parts and not modifying the control system and all that. I certainly wouldn’t buy anything until well after kickoff.

7

Is there a way to attach an actual disable switch instead of the usb Easy button?

Our team actually uses a 3-position dead man’s switch to enable the robot, when testing our robot off the field and would like to continue to use it.

-Oris-

8

It’s not hard to connect whatever switches you want to the Driver Station. You can program your own “dead man” function to turn off all potentially dangerous actuators based on that input.

9

Glad to hear that you are using additional safety precautions. If you have any issues actually connecting it, please ask, as I certainly don’t want to see you drop a safety convention due to the new stuff.

As mentioned, I’d suggest wiring the switch to the I/O module. In your code where you feed the user watchdog, AND in the state of the switch. You could go further and actively kill the watchdog if you like. Note that I don’t actually have the WPILib stuff in front of me, so I think it is kill that you’d call, but I can’t be sure.

Greg McKaskle

10

yes,
GetWatchdog().Kill();

I don’t know how you would AND in the state for feed (or any other function), it has no arguments. You would have to use an if.

**From: *Watchdog.h***
	bool Feed();
	void Kill();
	double GetTimer();
	double GetExpiration();
	void SetExpiration(double expiration);
	bool GetEnabled();
	void SetEnabled(bool enabled);
	bool IsAlive();
	bool IsSystemActive();
11

Sorry about that. I was just using AND as shorthand for performing the Feed only if current conditions AND the safety switch indicate it is True.

If this doesn’t make sense, ask again. I’ll leave the actual implementation to the experts such as yourself.

Greg McKaskle

12

I think this confusion comes directly from thi type of thinking. When several language agnostics are speaking generally, they communicate in a pseudo language that then gets translated to reality. Understanding the pseudo language also makes programming on ones own much easier.

13

The presentation is very nice and useful, thanks!

It refers to (page 4) the DS application version that works on any PC (but only for beta teams). Is this available somewhere now ?

I would like to install this on a standard laptop if possible.

Ideas, suggestions ?

Many thanks

14

The update for the DS should work on any Windows computer, not just a Classmate laptop.

Greg McKaksle

15

Thanks Greg!

That worked.

Now if someone can upload the unprotected control sys documentation so that we can print, that would be nice.

Gopal