Rustboard is a browser-based dashboard for use in FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). Dashboard layouts can be edited within browsers, saved to a browser's local storage, or transferred to other browsers with JSON.
This project first started during the 2023 Charged Up FRC season when Vault was exploring ways to make a custom payload controller interface. Ultimately, we decided to use a touch-screen monitor to display a simple HTML dashboard. While this was much less capable than Shuffleboard, it was also more aesthetically pleasing, more customizable, and less prone to disastrous failure before a match (If the dashboard crashes, just reload the page :D). After our last competition, we began taking this project farther with the goal of making a better and faster alternative to Shuffleboard.
You'll need one of the following browsers:
- Microsoft Edge 12+
- Google Chrome 32+
- Firefox 29+
- Opera 19+
- Safari 8+
Since this project uses only HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, you can simply download the project and click on the index.html file!
When you first open the index page, you should see a blank layout:
To begin creating your own layout, go to edit>turn on editing mode. You will then have options to add nodes and edit them.
If you wish to create a new layout, go to file>new layout. You can rename any layout by going to file>open layout and right clicking on the layout you wish to rename. Alternatively, if you want to view an example layout, copy a json file in the samples directory and go to file>import json.
The test directory contains a sample Java program with websocket server code and an API for pulling data from dashboard layouts. To connect your dashboard to the websocket server, go to options>settings and verify that the websocket URL is correct. The dashboard will automatically connect when it detects the websocket server.
Edit: the test directory contains very outdated server-side code, so check out the "webdashboard" directory in the FTC2024 repo in this org if you want to test. If you want to test the Java locally, you'll have to edit the code a bit and set the IP address on the dashboard to localhost
We would love to see how other teams can improve this project! If you or your team is interested in contributing, simply create a pull request. If you have any questions or suggestions that aren't suited for an issue, feel free to email us at vault6936programming@gmail.com.
This project is available under the MIT license.