Web UI

WebUI is the Javascript application designed to control robots over the ROS. It uses websockets to connect to ROS.

Requirements

Running

JS Part

Production

Running in stable enviroments, will take a while to load for first time as files are beeing minimized:

webpack --optimize-minimize & node backend/entry.js -p 8000 -c {ROBOTS_CONFIGS_DIR} -r {ROBOT_NAME}

Development

Monitors for file changes and if detected repacks the files and restarts the webserver

webpack -w -dev & nodemon backend/entry.js -p 8000 -c {ROBOTS_CONFIGS_DIR} -r {ROBOT_NAME}

ROS Part

roslaunch webui webui.launch

Deveoper information

Backend

NodeJS backend application: source Ros Nodes: [source][nodes/]

Fronend

Javascript Client application: source

Framework and Main Libraries

The core libraries:

• Backbone
• MarionetteJS
• Bootstrap
• Jquery
• RequireJS
• Webpack

Main Files

• application.js - Main aplication file
• ros.js - ROS websocket objects (topics/services/params)
• api.js - Higher level functions for communication with ROS
• layout - Main Layout view and template for application header
• layout.tpl - Current pupeteering page layout template

Troubleshooting

Sometimes not all topics subscribed or beiiing publsihed after refresh. See the issue RobotWebTools/rosbridge_suite#138

Need patch for rosbridge module. By default the path on Ubuntu: /opt/ros/indigo/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/rosbridge_library/internal/publishers.py

A quick hack to prevent the problem is commenting out topic unregistration in pulibhser.py

311# if not self._publishers[topic].has_clients():
312#           self._publishers[topic].unregister()
313#            del self._publishers[topic]