Manually Setting the Driver Station to Start Custom Dashboard¶

Note

If WPILib is not installed to the default location (such as when files are copied to a PC manually), the dashboard of choice may not launch properly. To have the DS start a custom dashboard when it starts up, you have to manually modify the settings for the default dashboard.

Warning

This is not needed for most installations, try using the appropriate Dashboard setting for your language first.

Selecting Driver Station Dashboard from Default Options¶

Click on the Settings tab (gear icon) and then change the "Dashboard".

Open the FIRST Driver Station, click on the Settings tab, and select your desired available dashboard.

Configuring Custom Dashboards¶

The FIRST Driver Station allows users to configure custom dashboards or change the default WPILib year used for dashboard lookups. These changes can be made in the DriverStationDashboardSettings.json.

File location¶

The configuration files are located at C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\FIRSTDriverStation\DriverStationDashboardSettings.json for Windows systems, or ~/.firstds/DriverStationDashboardSettings.json for Unix systems. If this file does not already exist, you can create one yourself and place it in the correct DS configuration directory as mentioned previously.

Note

While DS is running, you can also access and change this file through the web server at http://localhost:6768/overrides.html`.

Configuration¶

The configuration file has two top-level optional keys, CustomDashboard and DashboardYearOverrides

{
   "CustomDashboards": [
      { "Name": "CoolDash1", "Executable": "C:\\Dashboards\\CoolDash1.exe" },
      { "Name": "ExtraDash", "Executable": "C:\\Dashboards\\ExtraDash.exe" }
   ],
   "DashboardYearOverrides": [
      { "DashboardYearToOverride": "2027_alpha5", "DashboardOverrideYear": "2027_alpha6" }
   ]
}

CustomDashboards¶

The CustomDashboard key is an array of custom dashboards to add to the dashboard selector in the DS. Each entry has a Name field with the display name shown in the DS dashboard selector and an Executable field with the full path to the dashboard executable to launch.

DashboardYearOverrides¶

The DS defaults to looking for dashboard installed in the WPILib folder for the current year (e.g. C:\Users\Public\wpilib\2027). DashboardYearOverrides allows you to change which year’s WPILib folder the DS is looking for dashboards in. Each entry has two fields, DashboardYearToOverride which is the WPILib year string the DS would normally use, and DashboardOverrideYear which is the year string to use instead of the DashboardYearToOverride.