Getting started¶

Connect to FPGA¶

Connect via USB port (not recommended, only if not found in the network)¶

Power-up your FPGA with the flashed SD card in it. Connect a USB cable to the UART port of the FPGA, after that use the following command:

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

You should see either the FPGA boot screen or already the login screen (if not press enter). Login in data: user: ‘root’ password: ‘Roboy2016’

To find out what IP the FPGA is using:

ifconfig

Connect via ssh¶

Connect either an ethernet cable to the FPGA and your LAN or connect it directly to your PC (in ubuntu-> settings-> network-> wired-> options-> ipv4-> shared_to_others)

The FPGA can be found via NMAP (search for Gandalf)

sudo nmap 192.168.0.0/24

If you cannot find this net, use Roboy’s class B net:

sudo nmap 192.168.0.0/16

In the ~/.bashrc of the FPGA edit the ROS_MASTER_URI variable so it is set to the IP where ROS core was started. Source the ~/.bashrc and make sure ROS_IP and ROS_MASTER_URI are set correctly:

echo $ROS_IP
echo $ROS_MASTER_URI

Copy data to FPGA¶

Copy plexus to FPGA¶

Copy the roboy_plexus binary to the FPGA:

scp <YOUR CATKIN WORKSPACE>/devel/lib/roboy_plexus/roboy_plexus root@10.42.0.1:~

Copy HDL to FPGA¶

The copy is only needed if the RBF file was changed.

FireUp the system¶

Start the ROS core on your host PC.

roscore

Run roboy_plexus on the FPGA:

./roboy_plexus

If you haven’t done this before execute the following commands on your computer:

echo "export ROS_IP=$(hostname -I|head -n1 | awk '{print $1;'})" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://$ROS_IP:11311" >> ~/.bashrc

Troubleshooting¶

Troubleshooting plexus on PC¶

Echo $ROS_MASTER_URI shows the wrong IP even bashrc was edited

First solution

source ~/.bashrc

Second solution (IP address has to be changed to your current IP)

export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://192.168.0.231:11311

Troubleshooting plexus on FPGA¶

If the LED slides shows two “running” LED’s, plexus is started more than once. In that case use the following command:

killall roboy_plexus

It might happen that the ssh interface doesn’t open the terminal. This might occur if the plexus code is broken - to prevent it from autostart. In that case, connect the board to a PC via USB and comment out the last line of ~/.bashrc that starts Plexus.

Visualize data¶

For visualizing your data use RQT

Go into your catkin WORKSPACE and into SRC and clone RQT

git clone https://github.com/Roboy/roboy_rqt_plugins.git

After catkin_make is executed the new plugins have to be sourced:

source <YOUR CATKIN WORKSPACE>/devel/setup.bash