robotics-prototype

This repo contains the Robotics software team code.

Contributing and Development Environment

This project uses python virtual environments, so it is necessary to ensure that the virtual environment is properly setup and indeed uses python3.8+.

Automatic Setup

Notes:

• Make sure you have at least 10GB of free space to complete the installation. More is always better.
• The script will take about an hour to complete (depends on internet speed and specs). Please monitor the process for any potential errors.
• You should be prompted once (maybe more) for sudo password. Apart from that, you can sit back and relax 🙂

To use the automatic setup script you must first clone the repo using the command below. Make sure that you do not have a directory named robotics-prototype in /home/$USER/Programming or it will be overwritten.

$ git clone git@github.com:space-concordia-robotics/robotics-prototype.git ~/Programming/robotics-prototype

When you have cloned the repo you can then execute EnvironmentSetup.sh which will setup the environment. Make sure to uninstall previous ROS installations or the script will exit.

$ cd ~/Programming/robotics-prototype
$ ./EnvironmentSetup.sh

After you have restarted your terminal you can run the GUI

Running the GUI TODO: port GUI to ROS2

1. Make sure your virtual environment is activated.
2. In a terminal window run rosrun controller script

Manual setup

If for some reason the automatic script doesn't work, you can follow these steps to set up the development environment.

Prerequisites

It is recommended to be using Ubuntu 22.04 (although it is possible to use other linux distros, Windows or MacOS if desired).

Install required packages

$ sudo apt install python-venv git python-pip

Clone the repo.

$ cd ~/
$ mkdir Programming
$ cd Programming
$ git clone git@github.com:space-concordia-robotics/robotics-prototype.git

A local repository should now be created. robotics-prototype is the root directory for this project.

Setup virtualenv

$ cd robotics-prototype
$ python -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate

You should see a (venv) appear at the beginning of your terminal prompt (in Linux and Mac at least) indicating that you are working inside the virtualenv. Now when you install something:

(venv) $ pip install <package>

It will get installed in the venv, and not conflict with other projects installed system-wide.

Install dependencies

(venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Setup setuptools

Still in the root directory,

(venv) $ python setup.py develop
(venv) $ pytest

Running pytest without doing python setup.py develop will give a ModuleNotFound error. To read up more on this, click here

To deactivate virtualenv, run deactivate.

Install and setup Arduino + Teensyduino

Run ./install_arduino_teensyduino.sh

After the script is done, you should be able to run arduino by cd $HOME/arduino-<version-numver>/ and running: ./arduino.

To verify that Teensyduino was properly setup, go to Tools --> Board and make sure you see options that include "Teensy" in their names. To be extra sure, you can try uploading a sketch to a teensy as well.

Install ROS-Humble

bash ./install_ros.sh

To see exactly what happened during the installation of ROS-Humble, you can read the script file located in which ever directory it was downloaded in. Your ~/.bashrc file was modified, and so to make use of the new changes, you should restart your terminal.

To verify ROS-Humble has been successfully installed, you should do

$ ros2
$ printenv ROS_DISTRO

In the output of the last command you should see included: humble

To stop a running process in the command line, press Ctrl-C

.bashrc edits

You should add this to your ~/.bashrc file. To automatically open ~/.bashrc using the GNU nano text editor, you can run eb. (this shortcut was added in your .bashrc file during the scripted ROS installation, among a few others)

. ~/Programming/robotics-prototype/robot/rospackages/install/local_setup.bash
. ~/Programming/robotics-prototype/venv/bin/activate
source ~/Programming/robotics-prototype/robot/basestation/config/.bash_aliases

Open a new terminal for changes to apply. You should automatically have a virtual environment activated. The last line added a couple of aliases. You can read the .bash_aliases file to see all the new aliases.

Setup git hooks

Git hooks are important for performing repository validity checks. To setup git hooks using Git Bash, run the following commands from the root of the repository (ex: from ~/Programming/robotics-prototype/):

• cp commit_message_hook.py .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg
• cp branch_name_verification_hook.py .git/hooks/post-checkout

The commit hook prepender and branch verification hook

Now, when ever you using git commit -m commit-message-hook will prepend the issue number to your message. This will show up in the repo as [#<issue number>], so there is no longer a need to add this to your commit message. This will work as long as your branches are named using our branch naming standards defined in our wiki, otherwise the commit will be aborted. For more information on our conventions check here.

In order to write a long commit message using git commit -m, write a concise title and then press enter twice. Then, type as long a message as is appropriate and close the quotation mark. This ensures it will be formatted nicely on github.

Finish the commit and git push as usual.

Lastly, the branch-verification-hook will verify if the names of newly created branches follow our naming conventions explained here. Note that this hook will only run after entering git checkout , and not when the branch is created.

Extra Info

• If you want to code in C++ using a Teensy, you will need to read this wiki page.

• You can read about the code formatting guide here

Using Git

For a quick primer on our workflow using git, CLICK HERE :)

Cloning and Pulling Updates for Dependencies

We managed our third party dependencies with the cli tool: "vcs import"

• sudo apt-get install python-vcstools libtins-dev
  
  In the robot/rospackages/ directory run:
• vcs import < in-house-dependencies.repos
• vcs import < third-party-dependencies.repos