As the driver for our team this year, I was wondering what sort of information other teams put onto their dashboards during the match. I put a camera feed to look at but then realized that I never really used it during matches. What information do you all have for your drive team on Smart Dashboard (Or its variants)?
Additionally, our coach was wondering whether we could put a live feed of scoring status during the match so they don’t have to look around to see what is scored. I was thinking if we can somehow access the FMS as the scorers input the information onto a tablet, but that might not be possible.
This is a cool idea. I do not think the fms puts this sort of data out. The only class I can find (other than the alliance station method) is the getGameSpecificMessage() method. Last year there was a gameData() method that told you when part of the game was unlocked, but I cannot find it this year.
Is there a way you can help pushing to get that data? (I know the answer has been no since at least 2017, but no one has had spare time to even look into it???)
There are events (especially districts) where live scoring is visible by one alliance looking forward, and the other has to turn around to see the live scoring. It does create somewhat of a competitive advantage for some teams.
Think worlds last year, you had to look up at that narrow bottom screen, good luck to the center alliance seeing it.
A compromise I’ve seen at some events is they have a TV at each driver station edge to make easy viewing of the live scoring. Another option is FIM fields now have a tablet in the center drive station showing FMS stats during robot connection before a match, maybe it can switch to live scoring data during a match.
Regarding adding this info to robot-available data, I know the question has been asked in previous years. As with most things, I expect it boils down to priorities and resources. My understanding is that it is complicated by the architecture of FMS, i.e. FMS separates the scoring / display stuff from the robot control side. Given the news that there has been volunteer involvement in FMS development this fall (I believe to help implement the new playoff structure?), I’m hopeful that additional resources can be brought to bear for other features as well.
The TV screens to balance scoring display visibility from both alliances should be an easier ask—I expect the video hardware has enough outputs, so it’s mainly a question of having the screen available and running the cable.
I bet there are several other issues, like the game object not being defined until Week 0 (at least for the Web API), and fear of maybe DDOS the field accidentally (6 teams polling the scoring object at 20ms), among other issues.
It would be nice if we got a JSON string like the Web API (maybe the same object structure for simplicity) updated once a second someday. Then the delivery mechanism can stay the same each year. It sounds simple on this side, but I’m sure it’s not in the FMS.
