# dslog-reader

`dslog-reader` is an alternative viewer for the (binary) `.dslog`,
`.dsevents`, and `.pdplog` files produced by the official FRC Driver
Station provided in the [FRC Update Suite][].

While the [QDriverStation][] is wonderful for removing the need for
Windows (or Wine--I have verified that the FRC Update Suite 2017.2.0
log reader does work in wine 2.3) on anything but your competition
driver station computer, it doesn't help you answer "what the hell
happened during that match!?"  You could look at the log files on the
driver station computer itself, but the drive team will be taking it
in a few minutes for the next match.

# Supported formats

|           | 0   | 1   | 2   | 3   |
|-----------+-----+-----+-----+-----|
| .dslog    | yes | yes | no  | yes |
| .dsevents | no  | yes | yes | yes |
| .pdplog   | no  | no  | N/A | N/A |

Regarding when each version was in use:

|      | dslog | dsevents | pdplog |
|------+-------+----------+--------|
| 2009 |       |          |        |
| 2010 |       |          |        |
| 2011 |       |          |        |
| 2012 |     0 |        0 |        |
| 2013 |       |          |        |
| 2014 |     1 |        1 |        |
| 2015 |     2 |        2 | 1      |
| 2016 |     3 |        3 | -      |
| 2017 |     3 |        3 | -      |

I don't know that the dslog/dsevents 2->3 transition happened between
seasons, it could have happened during the 2014 season.  Blanks are
unknowns, "-" means not-in-use.

# TODO

 1. [ ] real user interface
 2. [ ] figure out how to robustly handle dsevents that have been
        munged together into one event.
 3. [ ] parse tagged dsevents data (blocked by #2).
 4. [ ] figure out how to parse `.pdplog` version 0
    - [ ] find some `.pdplog` version 0 files to test with
 5. [ ] figure out how to parse `.pdplog` version 1
 6. [ ] figure out how to parse `.dslog` version 2

# References

Most of the details on file formats came from posts by National
Instruments employee Greg McKaskle on Chief Delphi:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104689

# Alternatives

## FRC Update Suite

Obviously, one could run the National Instruments' "Driver Station Log
File Viewer" (`C:\Program Files\FRC Driver
Station\DS_LogFileViewer.exe`) that is distributed in the
[FRC Update Suite][].

Downsides:
 - it is not Free Softare
 - the source is not available
 - Windows-only, though I did get it to work in Wine.
 - no CSV export... honestly, just limited functionality, and since no
   source code, good luck doing what you want.
 - Almost unusable on small screens like my x60.

I got the version from FRC Update Suite 2017.2.0 working with Wine on
Parabola GNU/Linux-libre (a derivative of Arch Linux).  The tricky
part was the dependency on .NET 4.6.1.

Packages installed:
 - wine (2.3)
 - winetricks (20170207, imported from Arch Linux)
 - lib32-gnutls
 - samba (for the ntlm_auth program)

Instructions:

 - Run `WINEARCH=win32 winetricks --unattended dotnet461`
   It wouldn't work with a 64-bit Wine directory, and one of the
   installers fails unless run --unattended.
 - Run `wine setup.exe` on the `setup.exe` file from the
   FRCUpdateSuite `.zip` file.
 - Lauch the program with `wine '.wine/dosdevices/c:/Program Files/FRC Driver Station/DS_LogFileViewer.exe'`

## DSLOG-Reader

FRC Team 548 (the Robostangs) also wrote a Free Software alternative
to the National Instruments log viewer, [DSLOG-Reader][].

Downsides:
 - Windows-only.  It is written in C#; and while I could get it to
   compile with Mono, much of of the plotting functionionality that it
   uses is implemented by Mono as
   [`throw new NotImplementedException ();`][mono source].
 - only parses version 3 of the log format
 - no parsing of tagged dsevents data

While I did not use any of the code, I did find referencing it to be
very helpful when writing my implementation,

[FRC Update Suite]: http://www.ni.com/download/first-robotics-software-2015/5112/en/
[QDriverStation]: https://github.com/frc-utilities/QDriverStation
[DSLOG-Reader]: https://github.com/orangelight/DSLOG-Reader
[mono source]: https://github.com/mono/mono/blob/master/mcs/class/System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization/System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting/Chart.cs