Installation

Installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu is the Linux distribution adopted by the UnBall Soccer Team because it's simple to install and use for new users, specially the ones that haven't had any previous contact with Unix/Linux.

Installing Ubuntu is straightforward and should not represent any difficulty. The steps below are guidelines for a basic installation.

1. A distribution of Ubuntu Desktop can be downloaded directly from the official website. It is recommended to get the latest x.04 version a few months after its release, so as the development team can fix all discovered bugs.
2. Burn the .iso image either in a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or flash drive. If you decide to use the flash drive approach, take a look in this tutorial on how to create a bootable USB stick on Windows.
3. Put the media in your computer and check whether the device comes first in the BIOS boot order. Take a look in this tutorial to learn how to change the boot order.
4. The Ubuntu installation script must have initialized. Choose the preferred language, mark to download updates while installing and install third-party software and to erase the current disk. You may also manually create partitions and allocate space in disk according to your preferences.
5. The installation will also require you geographic location and keyboard layout. The keyboard layout need not be the same as the selected language. For instance, if you bought your laptop in the United States, the preferred language may be Brazilian Portuguese and the keyboard layout English (US, alternative international) to allow typing accents.
6. Afterwards, the installation will ask your name, the computer's name (for network identification), an username and password. Do not forget this password, since it will also be the superuser password (unless changed).
7. Finally, Ubuntu will be installed. This step requires to reboot the machine when finished.
8. Update all packages to its last version. You can either use the Update Manager or the commands sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade.

Installing ROS

Add the ROS Debian packages source

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu raring main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

Setup keys

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Update apt-get

sudo apt-get update

Install ROS Hydro full

sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-desktop-full

Initialize rosdep

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

In order to setup environment variables, append the following to ~/.bashrc

# Sourcing ROS environment variables
source /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash

# Sourcing UnBall environment variables
source <unball dir path>/software/devel/setup.sh

Configuring catkin workspace

TODO

References:

ROS installation guide

Installing OpenCV

TODO

Installing Freenect

TODO

UnBall code

TODO