Driver Station

The FRC Driver Station is used to control the competition robot during tournaments. It can be launched by double-clicking the icon on the Desktop. The first time that you launch the Driver Station it should be set to your team number in order to connect to your robot. See Setting Up the Driver Station in the FRC documentation.

The main display is the Operation Tab where you'll spend most of the time during the competition. This tab allows you to enable the robot and select the robot mode. The Status Pane tells you if the Driver Station is connected to the robot and if your robot code is currently running. It also gives you the battery level and the status of the joysticks.

The Diagnostics Tab contains additional status indicators that teams can use to diagnose issues with their robot. Here you can check software versions, restart the roboRIO, and diagnose connection issues.

You'll want to make sure that the gamepads and joysticks are connected and configured correctly. This is done via the USB Devices Tab.

The last tab on the left side of the Driver Station is the CAN/Robot Power Tab. This tab contains information about the power status of the roboRIO and the status of the CAN bus.

The Messages Tab displays diagnostic messages from the Driver Station, WPILib, User Code, and/or the roboRIO. This tab will be used extensively during testing to help eliminate errors and reduce warnings generated by your user program. You can also view diagnostic Charts to help tune and optimize the robot.

Firewall Configuration

In order for the Driver Station to communicate with the robot you may need to change the firewall configuration on your laptop. If the Communications indicator is red then the Driver Station is not connecting to the robot. See Windows Firewall Configuration to fix this issue.

Lab - Driver Station

There are two tasks for this lab:

  • Understand the Driver Station layout and controls.
  • Deploy code to the roboRIO.

Understand the Driver Station

This task is designed to get you familiar with the Driver Station. The Driver Station is required to control the competition robot and is only available on Windows.

  1. Connect to the roboRIO robot and launch the Driver Station by double-clicking the icon on the Desktop.

  2. Look at the Status Pane on the Driver Station and check the battery level. Ask one of the senior students what the minimum battery level should be prior to a match and what level is acceptable during testing.

  3. Check that the Communications and Robot Code lights are green. This indicates that the Driver Station is connected to the robot and that the team developed robot code is running.

  4. Connect a gamepad to the Driver Station laptop and check that the Joysticks light turns green.

  5. On the Operation Tab ensure that the robot is set to teleOperated. Click on the Enable button to enable the robot. You should hear the pnuematic controllers on the transmission start up.

  6. The robot should now be drivable from the gamepad. After testing disable the robot from the Disable button.

You're now done with this task!

Deploy Code to the roboRIO

This task demonstraits how to upload your robot code to the roboRIO.

  1. Connect to the roboRIO robot and launch the Driver Station by double-clicking the icon on the Desktop.

  2. Open your project in VSCode and run Deploy Robot Code from the command pallet. The roboRIO log view should pop-up in VSCode and show the upload. See Building and Deploying Robot Code in the FRC documentation.

  3. Look at the console output log to see if there are any errors during the upload. See Viewing Console Output for more information.

  4. If the upload is successful you will see a green light next to Robot Code in the Driver Station's Status Pane.

If the upload is NOT successful then check the following things:

  • Not yet done.

Once the upload is successful you're done with this task!

References