Sphero Mini ROS package

This simple ROS package can be used to connect and interact with a Sphero Mini robot. Developed with ROS Noetic, Sphero firmware 12 and catkin tools.

We use the Python interface developed by MProx.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Install ROS Noetic
• Make sure your catkin workspace is set up (cf. the official tutorial)
• Install the catkin tools using sudo apt install python-3catkin-tools (or python-catkin-tools if you are using python 2)

Installing the package

• Move to the src folder of the workspace
• Clone this repository
• Move back to the root of your workspace cd ..
• Build using catkin build

Connecting to the robot

To interact with the robot, you need to know its MAC address. To find it, scan the available devices using sudo hcitools lescan. Once you know the MAC address:

• Create a configuration file cp [PATH_TO_THE_PACKAGE]/config/sphero_conf.json.example [PATH_TO_THE_PACKAGE]/config/sphero_conf.json
• Edit the new file with your MAC address
• Rebuild the package catkin build