SmartDashboard works on some computers, not others

Technical Java
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Hi all. We want to use the SmartDashboard. We have several laptops that we use for programming or driver stations. We are using the Java version. We aren’t using SFX.

We have modified the command line in all of the computers, and so we got something on all of them. We also added a connection indicator, and it’s green on all of them.

That’s where the similarities end. From one computer, everything works. On a different computer, nothing is ever displayed. On another, it will display values, but it won’t update and save preferences.

When we say SmartDashboard.putNumber(“SomeNewKey”,newvalue), what I expect to happen is that a textbox magically appears on the SmartDashboard with a label of “SomeNewKey”, and newvalue in the text box. That works, on the machine I am currently typing on, but none of the others.

All of this seems to add up to a configuration problem of some sort, but I don’t know what’s configurable. All of the computers communicate via wifi, and wifi is set to use DHCP. They all have up to date driver stations, updated using the National Instruments update to the current competition software. They all have Eclipse installed, and all the same versions.

Is there something else to configure?

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Why are you modifying the command line?

Couple guesses

  1. file ->preferences -> use mDNS must be on
  2. some might accidentally be the wrong SD version, you may have kept the old version from last year. The new ones should have the “USB camera Widget”
  3. windows firewall / Microsoft Security essentials are enabled
  4. the mDNS on the others is incompatible with the windows build (check this by switching to static ip)
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Thanks. Spent the night cleaning out the team laptops. Each one was different, as might have been expected.

We changed the command line argument in response to the announcement that the original, start of season, software contained a bug that prevented the Java dashboard from coming up automatically. On one computer, the “fix” pointed at the 2014 version of SmartDashboard.

On another one, one of our programmers had created his own user profile (against instructions of course) and some of the installation had occurred on the “official” profile, while some had been done on his private profile, resulting in some mismatched settings.

On one, the “automatically show widgets” checkbox was off. On another, the use mDNS was off.

But now, all seems well. Thanks for your assistance.

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