Junta Renato y Jorge

Todo va lento, muy lento.

Seguir presionando para que le convenio quede listo a la brevedad.

Analizar la posibilidad de hacer todo simulado, por lo tanto, la programación es cada vez más apremiante.

MSN

Hola.

Solo quería comentarle a Renato que hace ya un tiempo lo agregué al msn pero no lo he visto conectado, no se si no se conecta casi o no me ha aceptado la solicitud. Mas que nada para comentar dudas que surgen con el. Pongo mi correo por si sirve para la comunicación vía msn.

oscar_panczenko@hotmail.com

Saludos cordiales.

Junta 19 de Agosto de 2009

Asistentes: Carlos, Arturo, Oscar. (Laura en clase por cambio de horario de la junta).

1. La lista de distribución se actualizará el viernes. Aquellos que no se hayan registrado en la liga que les envié (http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=cE9GNjFnSzlfT1gycGkwMWhmVnFpT2c6MA..) serán dados de baja asumiendo que ya no tienen interes en el proyecto.
2. Carlos y Arturo van terminando la parte de funciones de C++. Oscar esta empezando a ver el tema de Polimorfismo.

La proxima junta será en el horario habitual de 9.30 a 10.30 am el miércoles.

Hello All.

Some days ago I talked about our problem with the bluetooth comunication with a friend of mine (Victor Hugo). He has a lot of experience with wireless communications, specially with microcontrollers (Using robots). He said to me that the most probable error is that we need to configure the microcontroller to use the AirCable Bluetooth adapter as we made it in our own computers for Ubuntu (If the robot had it's computer it would been the same process). This is because the communication is not clear as the usb-serial cable, the only way to make the communication clear is to put a microcontroller to make the communication viable. The problem is that the program to make this possible is very complex and I still don't know how to do it. Victor Hugo can sell us some microcontrollers programed to work with a nRF2401A Tranceiver (1), and the communication between the PC and the robot would be clear, BUT the problem then would be the costs of getting the tranceivers and the microcontrolers.

I hope this info can help :).

Regards.

(1) nRF2401A Data Sheet.
http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/RF/uMiRF-v1.pdfProductoID=532&CategoriaID=38&SubCategoriaID=85

Nero in video!!!

Hi everyone!

Here's a video of Nero's behavior which is wrong, somehow the commands that it's receiving are switched. Perhaps someone can give us a clue on what's going on with it.

Regards!

C++ Tutorial

Hi Renato,

again as promised here's the website for the tutorial we're doing: http://pragsoft.com/ When you get there you have to hit the Download link at the left of the site and then go at the end so you can find the Online Books and the C++ Essentials in PDF is the Tutorial.

Regards!

Pioneers in Pictures

Hey everyone!

As promised here are some pictures taken from both Pio and Nero which I'll explain:

1. Here's Nero in a lateral view and in a perspective view, we can see that it's fully operational and assembled (videos in further posts).


2. Here's Pio and it might look a bit disassembled but it's just because as the on board computer has the extra serial ports to use the laser we had to use an auxiliary port that receives the serial commands, though we haven't been able to get the connector we need and we have to make, we hope in the next few days we can get our hands in it and make it fully operational as well.


3. Here are some pictures of the Bluetooth bundle we wanted to use.


Perhaps these images can give a better idea to what we were attempting to do.

Regards to all!

Junta del 12 de Agosto de 2009

Asistentes: Renato, Arturo, Laura, Carlos, Jorge.

1. Renato y yo vimos el avance del convenio entre las universidades. Tenemos que contactar a la gente en nuestra universidad para ver cómo van. En este momento todo está en la burocracia de nuestras universidades.
2. Discutimos el avance en los tickets de Assembla.
3. Se extraño la presencia de Oscar; Renato lo quería conocer.
4. Se abrió la posibilidad de programar el control del robot desde una Palm, iPod, etc. una vez que C++ ya nos sea una cuestión.
5. Nos enteramos que Renato envió a gente en Berlin los comentarios que se hicieron en este Blog mientras se aprendia Player/Stage y están siendo muy útiles.
   

Acuerdos:

1. Seguir estudiando C++. Subir al Blog la liga del tutorial que están usando.
2. Tomar fotos y videos de los robots y subirlos al Blog. Carlos dijo que el traía la cámara.
3. Renato y Jorge ver cómo va avanzando el convenio.
4. Recordamos a los que no pudieron asistir que la junta es a las 9.30 am en el lab. En caso de que nos enlacemos con Renato, sería en mi oficina.
   

Junta del 7 de Agosto de 2009

Asistentes: Carlos G., Arturo, Laura, Oscar, Jorge.

1. Platicamos sobre necesidad de aprender C++ lo antes posible. Van a sacar libros introductorios.
2. La comunicación con los robots será por el momento por cable serial o con una computadora en el robot que se comunica con otro computadora para dar mayor autonomía.
3. Empezamos con las juntas el miércoles 12 de Agosto a las 9.30 am en el laboratorio.
   

Update

Hey great news!!!

I have computer again and I already instaled ubuntu and player/stage. Playernav, Playerjoy and stage work perfectly and tomorrow I'll be in the lab in order to test conectivity with Pio and Nero in order to leave those 2 working correctly.

Hi everyoNe, this week its been impossible for me to go to the lab but I'm still workiNg on the reasearch of Jade and how to iNtegrate it with the robots aNd player/stage.

Good Luck

Luis

Hola.

Les escribo brevemente este post para avisarles que la semana que entra me encontraré en Puebla, espero llegar a finales de la semana entrante, cualquier cambio les avisaré.

Saludos.

Bluetooth configuration for Nero

Hello everyone!

After leaving the lab my brother told me he had a similar bluetooth issue once so he wrote this quick tutorial. I am sharing this information and will attach it in assembla as well. I hope this instructions solve our problems with Nero's bluetooth communication.


1. Instalar lo necesario:
sudo apt-get install bluez-pin
sudo apt-get install bluez-utils

2. Editar configuración del Bluetooth:
sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

3. Remplazar el contenido actuar del archivo por:
#
# HCI daemon configuration file.
#

# HCId options
options {
# Automatically initialize new devices
autoinit yes;

# Security Manager mode
# none - Security manager disabled
# auto - Use local PIN for incoming connections
# user - Always ask user for a PIN
#
security user;

# Pairing mode
# none - Pairing disabled
# multi - Allow pairing with already paired devices
# once - Pair once and deny successive attempts
pairing multi;

# PIN helper
pin_helper /usr/bin/bluepin;

# D-Bus PIN helper
#dbus_pin_helper;
}

# Default settings for HCI devices
device {
# Local device name
# %d - device id
# %h - host name
name "Nino's Laptop";

# Local device class
class 0x3e0100;

# Default packet type
#pkt_type DH1,DM1,HV1;

# Inquiry and Page scan
iscan enable; pscan enable;

# Default link mode
# none - no specific policy
# accept - always accept incoming connections
# master - become master on incoming connections,
# deny role switch on outgoing connections
lm accept;

# Default link policy
# none - no specific policy
# rswitch - allow role switch
# hold - allow hold mode
# sniff - allow sniff mode
# park - allow park mode
lp rswitch,hold,sniff,park;

# Authentication and Encryption (Security Mode 3)
#auth enable;
#encrypt enable;
}

4. Reiniciar los servicios de Bluetooth:
sudo /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart

5. Para checar que todo esté bien hasta el momento
hcitool scan

Debe de devolver alguna lista de dispositivos cercanos…

6. Para obtener el canal donde se encuentra el puerto serial:
sdptool browse XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
donde XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX es la dirección MAC del dispositivo Bluetooth

Debe de regresar algo parecido a:
Browsing XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX ...
Service Name: Bluetooth Serial Port
Service RecHandle: 0x10007
Service Class ID List:
"Serial Port" (0x1101)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 1
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x656e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Serial Port" (0x1101)
Version: 0x0100
Por lo que en ese caso sería el canal 1…

7. Editar el rfcomm.conf:
sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

De la siguiente forma:
rfcomm4 {
bind yes;
device XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX;
channel X;
comment "Serial Port";
}

8. Para terminar…
sudo rfcomm release 4
rfcomm connect 4

Si todo está bien, debe de aparecer algo parecido a:
$ rfcomm connect 4
Connected /dev/rfcomm4 to XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX on channel X
Press CTRL-C for hangup

No opriman en ningún momento CTRL-C hasta que sepan que todo está detenido y no hay peligro de que el robot pueda seguir caminando por su cuenta…


SU PUERTO SERIAL (PARA EL .CFG) SERÍA EL /dev/rfcomm4


Regards!

Bluetooth Connectivity

We haven't accomplished yet connectivity between Player and Nero but we already accomplished connectivity using the Terminal so I will explain what is to be done in order to achieve it.

1. $cd /etc/bluetooth
2. $ls
3. Make sure you have the rfcomm.conf file and then $sudo gedit rfcomm.conf
4. In the file paste:
rfcomm0{
bind yes;
device 00:0A:3A:2D:7C:64;
channel 1;
comment "Serial Bluetooth";
}
5. The interface should then be created, to check it type $ls /dev/rfcomm0 and it should appear. That is the new interface to be used.
6. To connect to the AirCable use $rfcomm connect 0
7. A connection message should appear and the blue led in the AirCable should be turned on.

We now need to know if we can execute a script of something to connect Player and Nero but we are making progress.

Cheers!

NERO Running!!

Hello.

Las thursday Arturo, Laura, Carlos, Luis, Dr. Uresti and I could see how NERO moved for the first time, the problem was that depending on the motor configuration it moved slow or very fast, and if it was connected with Laura's pc it only moved one wheel, Instead with my lap it moved both. I hope we can solve this little mistery next monday.

It was very encouraging and we are going forward to connect a BlueTooth device to the serial port of NERO to control it remotely from the pc. We hope that it will work without big problems and with a good communication range. Then we expect to have PIO ready too.

Regards.

Junta del 16 de Julio de 2009

Los robots van muy bien. Ya funciona Nero con cable serial y estan a punto de probarlo por Bluetooth. Se quedaron viendo la polaridad de los motores de Nero.

Jade ya está un poco más dominado y Luis va a ver que tan facil es comunicarlo con Player. El hecho de que ahora se puedan controlar los robots desde las computadoras, nos abre mayores posibilidades para que funcione bien la plataforma de Jade.

Finalmente, yo (Jorge) voy a estar fuera del CEM por dos semanas. Me reincorporo el 3 de Agosto.

Controlling Nero with Playerjoy

Great news comrades!

We could control Nero with the playerjoy util using the usb-serial cable. What we did was simply creating a nero.cfg file using the "p2os" driver for Activmedia robots. This is the code:

driver
(
name "p2os"
provides ["position2d:0" "power:0" "sonar:0"]
port "/dev/ttyUSB0"
safe 1
)

We then just executed playerjoy succesfully. Tomorrow we are going use Nero's serial port to control Nero with a bluetooth device and see him roaming in the lab's floor for the first time :).

See you!

Aria Demo using the Pioneers

Since the beginning of the week we've been trying to change the way we will use both Pio and Nero in order to finally start to work on them physically. As teacher Alejandro Pineda suggested, we should get rid of the on board computer the robots have and just focus on managing the data they get and receive via serial port.

To achieve that we've been making tests on the printed circuits and we now found out the way to make them work without the computer and just by serial port which will be more convenient because we can get a Bluetooth adapter to get wireless communication between our computers and the robots.

First we had to install the USB-Serial cable and we found a website which explains how to do it in a quick way: http://blog.mypapit.net/2008/05/how-to-use-usb-serial-port-converter-in-ubuntu.html

Using the Synaptic Package Manager one can install the Aria libraries and then use the example programs to test connectivity, the directory is /usr/local/Aria and there is a directory with examples called 'examples'. We used the demo provided and the syntax after the cable has been installed is: $ ./demo -robotPort /dev/ttyUSB0

We executed this demo program and it worked fine, the sonars seems to be working properly but there are several tests to make. For the time being Nero is now operational. We will continue doing a couple of tests and then use playerjoy to teleoperate Nero. After that we will procede with Pio in order to get him fully operational too and make the proper tests.

Re making some programs

Hi everyone! Lately I was working on making some little programs in player/stage, but as I use Windows too, it suddenly broke up, so when I was in the process of reinstalling it in its partition, (I don't know how, but always happen weird things to me) it had a problem, and also affected my linux partition, so after I started to install everything again. Now I'm writing from my OpenSuse partition, it took me a while to put everything as it was like video and wireless drivers, but now I'm in the process of player/stage, I'll have to remake everything I had done, but now I know how. I hope it takes 1 or 2 days.

Regards,
Luis

Player Stag reinstallation and Ubuntu upgrade

It took me some extra time to close the Playernav task because I completely reinstalled Player/Stage. I did this because I had been having several problems with the way in which I first installed Player/Stage in Ubuntu 8.04 (I did this compiling it and went through several issues to do so). I first upgraded my version of Ubuntu to 9.04, the newest one, and then installed Player/Stage entirely through the Synaptic Package Manager (like Carlos G. taught me to, just searching for every package that is related to robots and sensors and selecting the useful ones). This was very convenient because with my previous installation process I had been having several unpredictable problems like the fact that my screen suddenly turned black inexplicably or that I had to reconfigure and compile some utils like playernav.

The only trouble you have to go through after installing PS in this fashion is placing the missing rgb.txt file in the corresponding directory (I think Arturo already posted some links that indicate how to do so).

With this post I want to make a suggestion to the ones that plan to install PS in the future. You should really install it entirely through synaptic in order to avoid compilation issues.

See you soon!