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Mobile Rack Interface

Code to connect to the experimental equipment on the Mobile Rack workbench, such as Festo valves & Qualisys motion tracking system. Code common across different projects using THE RACK can be kept here.

set up WSL (for Windows)

  1. Get Ubuntu 20.04 from the Microsoft Store. If you don't need GUI, no further steps needed.

suggested tutorials

to enable GUI in WSL

  1. Make sure you're running WSL 2 (check by running wsl -l -v in Windows command line), if on WSL 1, refer to this and update to WSL 2.
  2. Install VcXsrv. This will be used for X11 forwarding in order to use GUI.
  3. Launch VcXsrv with settings: Multiple windows -> Start no client -> check all except Native opengl
  4. add to end of ~/.bashrc 
    export DISPLAY=$(awk '/nameserver / {print $2; exit}' /etc/resolv.conf 2>/dev/null):0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=0
    and open new terminal or run source ~/.bashrc.
  5. GUI should work now! Try it out with xeyes, xcalc, xclock etc (need to install with sudo apt install x11-apps) (reboot may be needed).
  6. For some PCs, by checking Native opengl in VcXsrv and adding export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 to ~/.bashrc, OpenGL can be used.

get this repository

Set up SSH key for GitHub, and in the desired directory, run...

git clone --recursive [email protected]:srl-ethz/mobilerack-interface.git

(--recursive option will automatically clone the submodules as well)

install necessary packages

(also check Dockerfile for hints on how to setup Ubuntu)

for Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt install cmake build-essential libmodbus-dev libeigen3-dev libserialport-dev libopencv-dev
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-numpy # install developer package and numpy for system's default python3 version.

Cmake version should be above 3.12 (check with cmake --version). Ubuntu 18.04 default cmake is older than that, so upgrade may be necessary, in which case run

# refer to: https://graspingtech.com/upgrade-cmake/
# remove installed cmake and install required packages
sudo apt remove --purge cmake
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev
# compile cmake from source
wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.16.5/cmake-3.16.5.tar.gz
tar -zxvf cmake-3.16.5.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.16.5
./bootstrap
make 
sudo make install

for macOS (todo: unverified)

brew install libmodbus eigen libserialport numpy opencv

Compile

cd /path/to/mobilerack-interface
cmake .
make

executables are output to bin/, libraries are output to lib/.

Python interface

In its current implementation, you must set the $PYTHONPATH environment variable to point to the directory containing the library binaries in order to run. (probably mobilerack-interface/lib)

## run this everytime you open a new terminal to run a python script using this library
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/lib
## Alternatively, append the line to ~/.bashrc if you don't want to run it every time.
python3
>> import mobilerack_pybind_module
>> vc = mobilerack_pybind_module.ValveController("192.168.0.100", [0, 1], 200)
>> vc.setSinglePressure(0, 100)

Generating Documentation

Uses Doxygen to generate documentation from inline comments in code. Install Doxygen, and run doxygen Doxyfile in this directory to generate HTML files (can be seen with browser at html/index.html).

setup for Qualisys Track Manager (QTM)

The QualisysClient class tracks each RigidBody (labels must be an integer between 0 - 9 in order for the QualisysClient to read it). QualisysClient can auto-discover QTM RT server instances on the same network. The following combination would work:

QTM running on QualisysClient running on
Windows machine WSL on same Windows machine
Windows machine Ubuntu or macOS machine on the same network

Festo valves

Power up the valves and make sure your PC is connected to the router.

Incorporate this into your project

refer to 3d-soft-trunk as an example.

references