Installation

We STRONGLY recommend to run a local lab in a docker container.

Do not flood your machine with potentially conflicting installations. Problems may depend not only on the os type, but also on its version. For windows, not all cross compiler are available at all.

See: run with docker

Why

A lot of people, teachers and students, around the world have no good internet connection or other good reasons not to use our online server at https://lab.open-roberta.org. This tutorial explains how to setup the server in a lokal system, either as standalone version (not recommended), or as a local network installation, e.g. in classrooms or maybe in a school or intranet network (sorry, no real experience in this).

You can install the Open Roberta Lab on several different systems. We recommend to install it on a linux system like Ubuntu, which is easy, but depending on what you want to use Windows or Mac OS X can be an alternative. So please read carefully what you have to install besides the Open Roberta Lab, maybe you don't need all of this.

Get the Open Roberta Lab

• download the binaries from the latest release here. Please choose the latest version openrobertalab_binaries.zip

License information is available here. Please read the file LICENCE and NOTICE carefully. If you have questions please contact us.

• extract the zip file and copy the content of the the openrobertalab_binaries folder to your desired location, e.g. into a new folder "OpenRobertaLab".

Get the necessary programs / packages for your system, used by the Open Roberta server:

• make sure that Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is available. Open a command prompt and type java -version, if it is already available then the output is something with java version "1.8.a_b" or a higher version number.

Install now all the programs needed for compilation of code for the different supported robot systems, maybe you do not need all of them

To "install" directly downloaded compilers on Linux systems, extract them to a folder of your choice (e.g. /opt/compilers/) and add the bin folder to your PATH, e.g. with echo export PATH="$PATH:<path-to-the-compiler-folder>/bin" >> ~/.profile

• on Ubuntu systems

  • Arduino based robots, e.g. Bot'n Roll

    • sudo apt-get install libusb-0.1-4
    • sudo apt-get install gcc-avr binutils-avr gdb-avr avrdude
    • install avr-gcc

  • for NXT

    • sudo apt-get install nbc

  • for Calliope

    • sudo apt-get install srecord libssl-dev
    • install the latest gcc-arm-none-eabi

  • for micro:bit

    • pip install uflash (to install pip run sudo apt install python-pip)

  • EV3 c4ev3

    • sudo apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabi

  • Edison

    • sudo apt-get python (Python 2 is needed, it is called python for Ubuntu 18.04)

  • Bionics4Education

    • install xtensa-esp32-elf

• on Fedora systems (Fedora, probably also CentOS, RHEL and derivatives)

  • for Calliope
    • # sudo dnf install arm-none-eabi-gcc-cs.x86_64 arm-none-eabi-gcc-cs-c++.x86_64 arm-none-eabi-newlib.noarch srecord

• on Arch Linux systems

  • Arduino based robots, e.g. Bot'n Roll
    • sudo pacman -S libusb avr-binutils avr-gdb avrdude
    • install avr-gcc
  • for NXT
    • pacaur -S nbc
  • for Calliope
    • sudo pacman -S arm-none-eabi-gcc arm-none-eabi-newlib
    • pacaur -S srecord
  • for micro:bit
    • pip install uflash or pacaur -S python-uflash

• on Windows systems

  • Calliope
    • install gcc-arm-none-eabi (see: http://gnuarmeclipse.github.io/toolchain/install/) It is recommended to get the eclipse plugin as a zip file containing the 64 bit version and unzip and add the bin folder to the PATH variable, rather than using the 32 bit embedded version.
    • install srecord (see: http://srecord.sourceforge.net/)
  • micro:bit
    • install python
    • pip install uflash

Start the Open Roberta Lab server

• For Windows: download and install Git or another method to run shell scripts on Windows. During the Git installation make sure to keep the option run .sh files with git bash ticked.
• The simplest way is to start the server via the start script ./admin.sh start-embedded-server. Here the database is running in an embedded mode.
• You can configure the start of the server with parameters for the start script, here is an overview what is possible and the default values:
  • determine the port: -d server.port=1999
  • determine the available robot systems:
    -d robot.whitelist=sim,ev3lejos,ev3dev,calliope2017,calliope2016,nxt,microbit,ardu,nao
  • determine the directory server internal temporary files: -d plugin.tempdir=/tmp/
  • determine the log file with e.g. >> log.txt
  • determine an error log with e.g. 2>> error.txt
  • run the server in the background: wrap the start command with nohup and &
  • example server start in a unix terminal: nohup ./admin.sh start-embedded-server -d robot.whitelist=sim,ev3lejos,ev3dev -d server.port=1234>>log.txt &