Kobuki Dashboard - Extra Features

[stonier]

Update with extra features that help non-developers exhibit kobuki for us.

• Priority to features that highlight errors in the system and recovery methods/info.

As we test over the next two-three weeks, list here things we think should be in it.

[stonier]

• Is enable/disable there?
• We need a watchdog process or node to report on crashes.
• Fork some ros_error output to diagnostics.

[bit-pirate]

• Is enable/disable there?

We do have enable/disable motors.

• Fork some ros_error output to diagnostics.

The diagnostics button turns orange/red, when warnings/errors are published on the diagnostics topic. Additionally the rosout button behaves similar.

• We need a watchdog process or node to report on crashes.

We could make better use of diagnostics, e.g. within all important apps. There is one problem though: If a process dies on start-up or during runtime, it might do so before being able to publish an error message on the diagnostics topic.

On the other hand dying processes are also caught by the rosout widget, but using this would require the non-ros-developers to get acquainted with the logs, i.e. which warnings/errors are important, which are not. That might not be trivial for them.

So, bottom line is, we have already tools in place, which report the problematic situations, but they are not convenient enough. Any ideas how we can change that?

[corot]

rosnode pings nodes to get its status. Can reuse its code to make a watchdog?

another idea: make use of the node attribute "required":

• using it, if a node in a roslaunch dies, the whole roslaunch is shutdown, what is obviously much more detectable that a single node death.
• launch a watchdog node within any app or bootstrap roslaunch file. If it dies, notifies the dashboard (or stops sending "keep-alive" messages every second)

But I wonder if we are not pushing to far the dashboard; to me it's (mostly) a convenient hardware status check tool.

[corot]

Should I implement this? Now? It's in my issues disintegration card...

[stonier]

We all have it. Basically I think we get together after refamiliarising ourselves and draw up a list of desirata for a demobot.

[corot]

Useful (but probably not priority) additions:

• Set digital output port
• Show digital/analog input ports

[bit-pirate]

👍

We would appreciate a PR for that! ;-)