Skip to content
This repository was archived by the owner on Sep 4, 2022. It is now read-only.

Getting Started

Jump to bottom
YiweiHan edited this page Mar 21, 2015 · 13 revisions

Welcome! The team is designing the software on top of ROS (on Ubuntu) and using git for version control. Here are some steps to get started.

  1. Get access to a Ubuntu system. If you haven't already got this options include dual booting or using a virtual box [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads <-- this is the easier option].
  2. Download and install ROS [http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/Ubuntu] or [http://wiki.ros.org/indigo/Installation/Ubuntu] depending on your version of Ubuntu. Make sure you install the FULL version.
  3. Follow the beginner ROS tutorial [http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials].
  4. Brush up on c++ [http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/].
  5. Create a github account and ask to be added to the repo.
  6. Pull down this git repo (git clone https://github.com/bluesat/owr_software.git).

If you would like to take a look at our GUI software:
7. Run (sudo apt-get install synaptic) to install synaptic, a package manager, if you don't have it installed yet.
8. Run synaptic (sudo synaptic).
9. Using synaptic, search and install the packages named "freeglut", "libprotoc-dev", "protobuf-c-compiler", "protobuf-compiler", "python-protobuf".
10. Change to the current branch (git checkout widgetGui)
11. Change directory to owr_software/gui/.
12. Run (catkin_make) to compile all the code. Note: please make sure you have the packages in step 9 installed or dependency issues may occur during compilation.
13. Run (source devel/setup.bash) to set up the shell environment (this has to be done for every new shell if you want to run the apps).
14. Open another terminal or tab and run (roscore). This allows ROS apps to start communicating.
14.5. (Optional) If you have a webcam, you connect it to your computer and use it to simulate the video feedback of the GUIs. If you are using a virtual machine, make sure you configure it to have the webcam properly connected to the guest machine (this is usually in "Removable Devices"). To check that it is connected properly, run (ls /dev/video0) and it should report back "/dev/video0". On a separate terminal or tab, run the commands (roscd gscam), (export GSCAM_CONFIG="v4l2src device=/dev/video0 ! video/x-raw-rgb,framerate=30/1,height=480,width=640 ! ffmpegcolorspace"), (rosrun gscam gscam). This should start ROS' video streaming program. Now go back to the terminal where the environment was already set up.
15. Run (rosrun owr_gui navigation) to start the app used for guiding the rover, or run (rosrun owr_gui analysis) to start the app used for scientific analysis of a location.

A helpful (visual!) slideshow about what ROS actually is: http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse466/11au/calendar/ros_cc_1_intro-jrsedit.pdf

Help, I'm new to coding

Help, I don't know how to use git

Clone this wiki locally