Overview

NOTE: This readme is a brief overview. For more in-depth docs on any specific component, refer to the wiki.

This repo currently contains Dawn and Runtime in the dawn/ and runtime/ folders, respectively.

Dawn

Dawn is a cross-platform frontend for the PiE robotics control system. It is the applications students will see and use when programming and testing their robots.

Dawn is a desktop app, but it is written with web technologies and packaged via Electron.

Download the latest packaged Dawn for your platform:

• Windows 64-bit
• Windows 32-bit
• Mac 64-bit
• Linux 64-bit
• Linux 32-bit

Development Quickstart

1. Install Required Software:
   • Get NodeJS or (if you already have it) make sure to update to v5.0.0 (download from the NodeJS website)
   • Get electron: npm install -g electron-prebuilt
2. Get code and dependencies
   • Pull the latest code from pioneers/develop.
   • Enter the dawn directory: cd dawn.
   • Install dependencies with npm: npm install. Remember to do this step whenever the dependencies change.
3. Start developing:
   • Start webpack in watch mode: npm run-script watch
     • Leave this terminal window running: webpack compiles your code, and automatically recompiles it when it detects changes.
     • Note: npm run-script build does a similar thing to npm run-script watch, but it does not watch for changes, and it builds for production, not development. Use watch for development and build when you are about to package an app for production.
   • Launch the application: npm start.
     • Leave this terminal window running also. Dawn should open.
   • When you make a change, the webpack watcher should automatically recompile your code. To see your changes, hit refresh: CMD-R (Mac) or CTRL-R (Windows).

Packaging Dawn

1. Install electron-packager: npm install -g electron-packager

2. Build for production: npm run-script build (as opposed to npm run-script watch during production).

3. Package app:

   • Packaging Dawn is done with electron-packager. Run the following from the dawn folder:

   electron-packager . dawn --platform=darwin --arch=x64 --version=0.36.2 --prune
   

   Here --platform is the target platform (darwin means OSX) and --version corresponds to the Electron version. --prune removes all dev-dependencies before packaging, since these needlessly increase the packaged filesize. If you use --prune, make sure to npm install again afterwards to get your dev-dependencies back.

Runtime

Runtime (formerly griff) is a python based platform for executing student code and controlling the robot hardware.

Quickstart

From the 'runtime' directory, run:

1. Install memcached
2. Use pip to install flask, eventlet, flask-socketio, and python-memcached
3. python runtime.py
4. memcached -p 12357 (from another terminal window)