Have you ever been frustrated because the FRC Driver Station only runs on Windows? That is, unless you want to put lots of effort into configuring Wine or visualizing Windows in some fashion. Or, perhaps you run Windows but hate the time it takes to install the LabVIEW runtime, how bulky it is, and the boot time of the DriverStation itself. Well, hello my fellow frustrated FRC Driver Station user, I seek to alleviate these problems.
I have forked the project created by Gluxon, added Joystick Support, Bound the F1, Enter, and Space keys to Enable, Disable, and Estop, and Added a Joystick Setup section to the Setup tab to select Joystick order.
I realize this sounds as if it is ready to go, except that I have a problem, NONE OF IT IS TESTED… I am a college student and do not have access to an FRC robot for actual testing. This is where the Chief Delphi (and FRC in general) community comes in. While I do not currently have the resources (a Windows or Mac machine) to put together packages for use other than on Linux, anyone who knows a little about Node and Node-Webkit (I managed to learn in the 5 days I worked on this) should be able to get the running fairly easily. Packages will be made eventually though, it will just take some time…
So, I am reaching out to you guys in search of people willing to test and give feedback on what needs to be done to get the Open Source Cross Platform Driver Station in a usable state, preferably before January, so it can be used for testing actual robots during the season.
I am in the same boat as you, despising the current restrictions placed on official frc software, and this seems like a good step in the right direction. One thing that you might want to look into is that the DS protocol is changing for 2015, rendering current implementations incompatible. See http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131048
Yeah, I did realize that the changes to the 2015 Control System would lead to changes being required in the Node Driverstation API. Despite that, I’m confident that the old CRios and Control System will still be used for testing purposes and so the current DS protocol is still a useful thing to have implemented. If it changes alot I will probably still maintain both versions (since the difference likely won’t be with the front end, but the back end Node Module.
Regardless of ANYTHING that happens though, I still want to see if I can get some teams to help test this since I cannot do it myself. (well at least not until the Winter break in 2 weeks time at the earliest). Even if the backend changes, I need to know what works and what doesn’t with the Joystick System, and I can only do so much using Netcat to capture packets.
I think that the LabVIEW simulator environment actually uses the DS protocol directly. I could probably get a windows VM setup with that environent to do some testing with.
Yeah, anything you can get to me about it will help. Here is the current Driverstation API, written in Javascript (Well, the whole project is actually in Javascript): node-driverstation
I plan to setup a VM soon, but I am not sure how soon I will have the time, or a license key, to do it…
I have been trying to run it, but I get an error when trying to run it.
Error: Cannot find module '/tmp/.org.chromium.Chromium.yCnfi2/node_modules/gamepad/build/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.10.5-linux-x64/gamepad.node'
at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:336:15)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:273:25)
at Module.require (module.js:362:17)
at require (module.js:378:17)
at Object.<anonymous> (/tmp/.org.chromium.Chromium.yCnfi2/node_modules/gamepad/gamepad.js:4:15)
at Module._compile (module.js:454:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:472:10)
at Module.load (module.js:354:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:310:12)
at Module.require (module.js:362:17)
I thought that this might indicate that I needed to build and install the node-gamepad referenced in the README, but following the instructions for it results in the following error:
[christian@C-Arch gamepad]$ ./node_modules/node-pre-gyp/bin/node-pre-gyp build --runtime=node-webkit --target=0.8.6
node-pre-gyp info it worked if it ends with ok
node-pre-gyp info using [email protected]
node-pre-gyp info using [email protected] | linux | x64
node-pre-gyp ERR! build error
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack Error: Failed to execute 'nw-gyp configure build --name=gamepad --configuration=Release --module_name=gamepad --version=1.0.2 --major=1 --patch=2 --runtime=node-webkit --node_abi=node-webkit-v0.8.6 --target=0.8.6 --platform=linux --target_platform=linux --arch=x64 --target_arch=x64 --module_main=gamepad.js --host=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/ --module_path=/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/build/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64 --module=/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/build/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64/gamepad.node --remote_path=./gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/ --package_name=node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz --staged_tarball=build/stage/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz --hosted_path=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/ --hosted_tarball=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz' (Error: spawn ENOENT)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/lib/util/compile.js:70:29)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:95:17)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:808:12)
node-pre-gyp ERR! System Linux 3.17.1-1-ARCH
node-pre-gyp ERR! command "node" "/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/node_modules/node-pre-gyp/bin/node-pre-gyp" "build" "--runtime=node-webkit" "--target=0.8.6"
node-pre-gyp ERR! cwd /home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad
node-pre-gyp ERR! node -v v0.10.33
node-pre-gyp ERR! node-pre-gyp -v v0.5.31
node-pre-gyp ERR! not ok
Failed to execute 'nw-gyp configure build --name=gamepad --configuration=Release --module_name=gamepad --version=1.0.2 --major=1 --patch=2 --runtime=node-webkit --node_abi=node-webkit-v0.8.6 --target=0.8.6 --platform=linux --target_platform=linux --arch=x64 --target_arch=x64 --module_main=gamepad.js --host=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/ --module_path=/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/build/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64 --module=/home/christian/OSDS/DriverStation.js/node_modules/gamepad/build/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64/gamepad.node --remote_path=./gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/ --package_name=node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz --staged_tarball=build/stage/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz --hosted_path=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/ --hosted_tarball=https://node-gamepad.s3.amazonaws.com/gamepad/v1.0.2/Release/node-webkit-v0.8.6-linux-x64.tar.gz' (Error: spawn ENOENT)
Is there anything I am missing here? Other dependencies? This was done on Arch Linux, with node-webkit compiled from the AUR.
Then some Arch Specific issues (I also use Arch, took me three days to get this all working… GAH)
The gamepad module is only compatible with up to Node 0.10, the version of Node-Webkit in the AUR is 0.10, but Node-Webkit 0.10 uses Node 0.11. So you need to downgrade Node-Webkit to 0.8.6 which, if you have run the
npm install
command you have installed in DriverStation.js/node_modules/nodewebkit/ and the executable is DriverStation.js/node_modules/nodewebkit/nodewebkit/nw which will need to be patched with
sed -i 's/udev\.so\.0/udev.so.1/g' nw
you work with libudev.so.1 which Arch has.
2) You will need to specify the --python switch for 2.7
--python=python2.7
at the end of the node-pre-gyp command since the Arch python executable is Python 3.
Hope that Helps, I am avalible until ~10:30 CDT (it is currently 7:11) if you still have problems.
I see the problem, npm install is failing with a subtle “read ECONNRESET” that doesn’t stop anything, it just keeps on going. Probably due to my terrible internet at the moment, but I can try again tomorrow morning when I get decent speeds.
I was able to get it to compile and run successfully on Arch Linux!
Here are the commands I used:
sudo pacman -S --needed nodejs # Only necessary if Node.js is not already installed
git clone [email protected]:gixxy/DriverStation.js.git # Use https if you don't have ssh set up
cd DriverStation.js
npm install
sudo npm install -g node-gyp # Install node-gyp globally
sudo npm install -g nw-gyp
cd node_modules/nodewebkit/nodewebkit
sed -i 's/udev\.so\.0/udev.so.1/g' nw
cd ../../gamepad
./node_modules/node-pre-gyp/bin/node-pre-gyp build --runtime=node-webkit --target=0.8.6 --python=python2.7
cd ../..
./node_modules/nodewebkit/nodewebkit/nw ./
This is basically everything in gixxy’s CD posts and README, put in one spot.
Everything looks like it is working, but I probably won’t be able to test it on a real robot until a few days from now. If I have time, I’ll try to see if I can get it to work on windows too.
I got it to compile/run, I just needed to have usable internet to do it. I was able to successfully use it with the LabVIEW simulator, and everything seems to work. All joystick axes and buttons are fully working!
You were right about it being difficult to compile on Windows.
I’ve tried everything I can atm, but I might be able to figure something out once I can fix my Windows partition to have enough free space to install Visual Studio.
I don’t know if you ran into this problem but currently the build (of node-gamepad) is failing with:
C:\Microsoft.Cpp.Default.props" was not found.
which might be due to only having the Windows 8 SDK, not Visual Studio.
On Windows:
Python (v2.7.3 recommended, v3.x.x is not supported)
Windows XP/Vista/7:
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2010 (Express version works well)
For 64-bit builds of node and native modules you will also need the Windows 7 64-bit SDK
If the install fails, try uninstalling any C++ 2010 x64&x86 Redistributable that you have installed first.
If you get errors that the 64-bit compilers are not installed you may also need the compiler update for the Windows SDK 7.1
Windows 7/8:
Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2012/13 for Windows Desktop (Express version works well)
