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Netbook Setup

Description: This tutorial will show you how to setup a netbook to control Mini Maxwell.

Tutorial Level: BEGINNER

Next Tutorial: Starting up Mini Max

Installation

Mini Maxwell has been developed against the desktop-full variant of ROS. You can use either the Diamondback or Electric releases.

Configure your Ubuntu repositories

Configure your Ubuntu repositories to allow "restricted," "universe," and "multiverse." You can follow the Ubuntu guide for instructions on doing this.

Setup your sources.list

Setup your computer to accept software from ROS.org.

  • Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)

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

    Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick)

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

    Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)

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

Set up your keys

  • wget http://packages.ros.org/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Installation

Make sure you have re-indexed the ROS.org server:

sudo apt-get update

There are many different libraries and tools in ROS. The ones required by Mini Maxwell can be installed by:

sudo apt-get install ros-diamondback-desktop-full ros-diamondback-arm-navigation ros-diamondback-turtlebot ros-diamondback-turtlebot-apps ros-diamondback-turtlebot-viz ros-diamondback-control ros-diamondback-brown-remotelab subversion

Environment setup

It's convenient if the ROS environment variables are automatically added to your bash session every time a new shell is launched:

echo "source /opt/ros/diamondback/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc

If you have more than one ROS distribution installed, ~/.bashrc must only source the setup.bash for the version you are currently using.

If you just want to change the environment of your current shell, you can type:

source /opt/ros/diamondback/setup.bash

Mini Maxwell Drivers (from source)

First, create a storage area for your own ROS packages, as well as checkout out code:

mkdir ~/ros

Add your ~/ros directory to your ROS Package Path, by adding the following line at the very end of your ~/.bashrc file:

export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=~/ros:${ROS_PACKAGE_PATH}

Now, we will checkout the drivers and custom definitions for Mini Max:

cd ~/ros
svn co http://vanadium-ros-pkg.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ vanadium-ros-pkg
svn co https://wu-ros-pkg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wu-ros-pkg/stacks/urdf_tools/trunk urdf_tools

Open a new terminal, to be sure that your ROS package path is updated, and then make sure that everything is built: (this could take a while)

rosmake mini_max

Congratulations, your netbook is now ready to be used as Mini Maxwell's new brain! Move on to Starting up Mini Max.

Wiki: mini_max_defs/Tutorials/Netbook Setup (Diamondback) (last edited 2011-09-08 18:00:39 by MichaelFerguson)