Wishlist
- Connection to UsarCommander
- ROS-nodes working for platform, arm, laser scanner and ins.
- Connection to playchess
Xsens MT installed and running on Kuka Youbot(Solved July 19)
Hokuyo UTM-30LX installed and running on Kuka youBot(Solved July 17)
Started
Labbook 2014.
4 December 2013
- Read paper where the tilted the Kinect downwards to create an occupancy grid.
25 November 2013
- Attended the Large-Scale 3D Point Cloud Processing Tutorial 2013. The VM disk image (29 Gb) was too big for the filesystem of my harddrive, so I got them from another harddrive. The whole image could be assembled from the parts with a simple cat part1 ... part7 > ROS-disk.vmdk.
- Yet, vmware couldn't mount the file, because of a missing configuration file. Installed Virtualbox according to the instructions, and now I could start the disk image.
- Had to add a international keyboard to the image and to select 3D acceleration in the options to be able to use the qviewer. The featureregistration is only available after a rebuild (from slam6d).
- The qviewer is not locally build, because a dependency was missing (libQGLviewer. Should build libQGLViewer with CONFIG += no_keywords to be compatible with Boost, according to the instructions.
24 November 2013
- Preparing for Large-Scale 3D Point Cloud Processing Tutorial 2013. Downloading VM disk image (
29 Gb).
- Downloaded VMware's Workstation bundle. You could install the bundle by the command sh VM*.bundle (as root, become root with command sudo -s).
- VMware will store its Shared images in /var/lib/vmware/Shared_VMs/
.
- The command vmware-mount now works, so I could continue with the instructions from James Little.
- Followed my instruction to start vpn and created a ~/start_vpn.bash. When successful, the script doesn't return and should be send to the background. When it fails, the script returns (without warning). Yet, it works (otherwise I couldn't have made this entry).
November 21, 2013
- Checked out the Ricoh Theta. Once connected with USB, the camera and wifi are switched off. The Windows program provided by Ricoh can only be used to view the images (and to do a firmware update).
- To connect to the camera, you could use the ptpip-protocol. Yasuhiro Fujii describes how to connect with the Theta camera via the Linux program gphoto2. According to gPhoto documentation, the default PTP/IP port is 15740, but this doesn't give images in my Chrome browser. A Japanese Mobile Hacker was able to control the shutter of the Theta via the 15740 port. Just using the standard http port 80 gives the sensor settings.
- The Theta camera doesn't seem to have ssh running :-(, so I cannot login.
- Tried the Android App DslrDashboard. The App was able to connect to the Theta, but gives an IO error once it requests an image (the Wifi button on the Theta has turned blue!).
- Could be that Theta is using the Media Transfer Protocol: an extention of PTP with meta-data. In that case Microsofts Media Player and/or Center should be able to connect to the Theta camera. Couldn't find that option. Downloaded Microsoft's PhotoSynth (version 2.0110.0317.1042). This doesn't work, because PhotoSynth is checking for updates via the internet. Connected to Theta Wifi it cannot find updates and quits.
November 19, 2013
- The power connection to the Hokuyo UTM-30LX was broken and repaired by Edwin. Tested the device with URGBenri, which worked (note the connection button next to the Data source).
November 6, 2013
- Found the ip-adress of the Kuka robot with avahi-discover.
- Was able to connect a vga-screen, keyboard and mouse to youbot. Problem was the vga-cable which I used (broken, thrown away). Another problem that if the youbot pc boots without (working) vga, the interface is not activated, so if you connect later a working cable, you still don't have a screen.
- As indicated in Autonomous Mobile Robots Labbook, I did t = kctclient('192.168.1.18');. Response was Start the kctserver.ex on the KUKA robot. Unfortunatelly, the ftp-window of my ssh client on nb-udk is corrupt, so I should do the upload via cygwin's scp.
- Executing kctserver.exe failed, because it is a Windows exe. Compiling failed because Winsock.h is used (and no protection on OS).
October 31, 2013
September 12, 2013
July 26, 2013
July 19, 2013
- The Awinda example is only for the MTw (wireless) Xsens sensor, so all examples in the Linux SDK work.
July 18, 2013
- Checked the public_source code. Program does a simple xsEnumerateUsbDevices(portInfoArray) and picks the first. Name is not in /dev format, but in bus:device format (USB003:002).
- Checked the shared_object code. Directory not only contains example, but also example_mt_ix_mk4_c and example_mt_ix_mk4_cpp. The wireless and xbus examples couldn't found any device. The main.cpp does a call to detectAndOpenDevices. This code is available in xsdevicedetector.h; the function does a call to scanPorts() and a call to open port (in bus:device format).
- The awindamonitor starts Qtimer with the function scanPorts. This function is inside myxda.cpp, so has no access to the log-window. Printing to std:cout also doesn't work (nor setting breakpoints, because no Debug project is defined). Just running the code gives five times "Scanning for Devices", but no device found message (print stays in buffer and only displays when program is killed). Solved that with flush.
- Checked example_mt_ix_mk4_c++.cpp and this file uses nearly the same code (at line 144). Using this code gives an abort.
-
- The ros-driver for the xsens from ethz gives also two alternatives (lse and mti). Will check lse first.
- lse_xsens_mti was depended on lse communication, which was depended on foreign relay. lse_xsens_mti was also depended on cereal port. Finally, the code was made. Directly starting bin/mt_node failed (?expected ros_server?), roslaunch seemed the appropriate way. Result was less impressive:
process[lse_xsens_mti/xsens-2]: started with pid [10445]
[FATAL] [1374147444.836468450]: MTi -- Unable to set the output mode and settings.
[FATAL] [1374147444.837042964]: BREAKPOINT HIT
file = /home/youbot/ros_stacks/lse_xsens_mti/lse_xsens_mti/src/mti_node.cpp line=113
- Changed the port-parameter in the launch file, but both "USB003:002" as "/dev/ptmx" didn't work.
- Did an update of the pending ros-updates.
- Checked for online help. Found IROS workshop with youBot, seabee robot with xsens,
- Looking through ros answers I found xsens kernel-driver at github. Added this driver to /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/modules.order.
- added NAME="ttyUSB0" to /etc/udev/rules.d/xsense.rules. Restarted, but public_source/example doesn't work anymore. Removed NAME (and DRIVER). Only without those two additional parameters public_source/example works.
July 17, 2013
- Connected Hokuyo to youBot. dmesg | tail shows that a new full-speed USB device is found and that /dev/ttyACM1 is assigned to it. The other two lines indicated in section 5.3.3 from the youBot Manual are missing (usbcore: registered & cdc-acm version ).
- Downloaded vmon_linux.zip and installed it in ~/Packages.
- Followed the instructions of the Install.txt, but sudo apt-get install libboost1.34.1 libboost-date_time1.34.1 libboost-filesystem1.34.1 libboost-thread1.34.1 libxmu6 libxxf86vm1 failed because those packages couldn be found..
- First installed sudo apt-get libxmu6 libxxf86vm1. Checked the repository which are used by apt-get with the command grep -h ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.
- Followed the instructions of the Ubuntu Guide.
- Found libboost1.38.1 in Lucid. Did sudo apt-get install libboost-dev but got comment that the latest version is already installed. Tried udo dpkg -i libscipcomm_0.2_i386.deb vmon_0.2_i386.deb but failed on depencies on libboost-date_time. Tried sudo apt-get install libboost-date-time-dev, but also here the latest version is already installed.
- The (obsolete) ubuntu version Oneiric (11.10) has version 1.42. Maverick (version 10.10) has version 1.40. Finally found it in version Hardy (8.04): version 1.34. Downladed the deb and installed with sudo dpkg -i libboost-date-time1.34.1_1.34.1-4ubuntu3_i386.deb. Also downloaded liboost-filesystem1.34 and libboost-thread1.34.
- Now sudo vmon works! Did sudo adduser youbot dialout. After a reboot vmon also works.
-
- Continued with Xsens. Downloaded MT Software Suite 4.1.5.. Inside the zip-file is an Installer. Installing it under Windows don't gives a Xsensdeviceapi.so. Called Xsens. Received Linux sdk. Made public_source without problems. example didn't work (maybe sudo example would). Created a /etc/udev/rules.d/xsense.rules with the content:
# Suggested in /home/youbot/Packages/mtsdk/public_source/README
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2639", ACTION=="add", GROUP="adm", MODE="0660"
Now the example reads out the sensor.
- Also made shared_object example and installed it system-wide (copied libxstypes.so and libxsensdeviceapi.so to /usr/local/lib).
- Installed Qt Creator with sudo apt-get install qtcreator.
- Continued with Section 8.1.1 from the manual (installing ROS on youBot).
- /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list already contained ubuntu precise main, so I didn't added ubuntu lucid main. Just did sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install ros-fuerte-desktop-full
- Added in ros_stack git clone https://github.com/ktossell/gps_umd and git clone https://github.com/ethz-asl/ethzasl_xsens_driver. After a rosmake this more or less worked. In xsens_driver/nodes was mtdevice.py, which after some small corrections (line-endings for print statements) tried to make a connection. Unfortunatelly, the default /dev/ttyUSB0 didn't work, --device=auto couldn't find any sensor while --device=/dev/ptmx gave a timeout for the message. Looked in example_mt_ix_mk4.cpp for information about the port which public_source example has found. more xstypes/include/xsens/xsportinfo.h indicates that PortName() should work. Lets try tomorrow ;-)
July 16, 2013
- Read User Manual. Manual describes to use Hokuyo's VMON program, which is available on the CD for both Windows and Linux. The applications have an example how to control the youBot from the commandline, but no server that listens for commands from the network (as used by the first year students). The ros-stack seems to be the most promissing option.
- Windows was not able to install the Vista driver. Found after a while a 64bits driver on Hokuyo download page. Same page pointed to a new viewer: UrgBenri (Windows and Mac-only).
- Used vmon (v0905) and connected to COM10 (as suggested by devicemanager->ports). Sensor works well.
- Also tried URG Benri. Can connect via serial, ethernet and a logfile.
June 15, 2013