NOW ON ROS2 Jazzy!

Quick Start

1. Install Ubuntu 24.04 on a Rapsberry Pi using the Rasbery Pi Imager
2. Run the install script for this package on the Pi: bash <(wget -qO- --no-cache -o /dev/null https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chrisl8/ArloBot/jazzy/setup-jazzy.sh)

3. SSH into the Pi and run: ros_start.sh

4. On a remote system (like on Windows, on the same WiFi network as the robot):

D:\ros2-jazzy\ros2-windows\local_setup.ps1 # Or wherever you put it.
ros2 run rviz2 rviz2 -d \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\chrisl8\Dev\ArloBot\navigation.rviz

Obsolete Hardware Notice

The Arlo Robot System by Parallax has been discontinued. At this moment they are entirely out of stock, so this project’s usefulness slowly grows to an end, although my personal implementation, which has always been the primary focus of this repository, lives on as I run my robot almost daily.

I would love to build a new version of this robot, but I haven’t the free time for it at the moment.
Until then, enjoy this for what it is, and understand that any commits you see will be rather focused on a set of hardware that is no longer available.

ROS2 ToDo:

• Reproduce the former ability to save and re-use old maps.
• Consider dropping “watchdog” from propeller_node
  • I don’t think that I need the stationary odometry publisher anymore?
  • Although it currenty also watches for and updates mismatches between ROS params and Propeller board.
• Convert propeller_node to be more ROS2 like
  • I’m not sure how the “spin” works as it should be 100% event driven:
    • It outputs when it gets data from the propeller board
    • It encodes to the propeller board upon receiving twist messages
    • Nothing else
• Clean up unused convenience scripts
  • Make sure they all still work. Some might just not work anymore and should be removed.
• Clean up unused bits of code in the node service
• Clean up unused bits of code in the website
• Fully test and make work the rest of the website and node code
• Update cypress to test what is left and only what is left
• Move all web bookmarks into relevant comments in my code or this Readme
• Use vcgencmd get_throttled to detect and alarm on voltage and thermal issues
• Monitor battery power from the activity board and alarm/act on low voltage
• arlobot.yaml is gone, so fix up anything that depends on it
• Reorganize old documentation into its own folder or delete it
• Rebuild my robot’s Pi from scratch and ensure it still works
• Could the PING and IR sensors be mapped into the “Collision Monitor” so as to be used by ROS but without affecting the map?
• Re-implement old functions that might be built into NAV2 now if I can sort out how to use them:
  • Go to waypoints
  • Go “home” (dock?)
  • Go to a specific location
• Clean up this readme and other docs that it links to
• Build a new robot using off-the-shelf parts

ArloBot Package for ROS

Here is a YouTube Video of this robot in action.

and SO MUCH MORE!

• This package provides a set of ROS packages for using a Parallax Arlo Platform robot to create and navigate a map of a room (Simultaneous Mapping and Localization) via Robot Operating System (ROS). Originally based on the old TurtleBot.

This package also includes:

1. An all in one install script that should get things as close to working as possible by running one install script.
2. A Python and Curses based Serial Interface testing utility to help diagnose problems and confirm your hardware is working.
3. A set of Bash script utilities to help in working with the robot.
4. A set of Node.js based utilities to automate many repeated tasks.
5. A Node.js based Server to run the robot at all times, along with:
6. A React based web GUI to interact with the robot.
7. Other fun things like Pushover integration.

Mobile Friendly Web Interface

Curses Serial Testing Interface:

~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/scripts/PropellerSerialTest.sh

• A Python Curses based serial communications test program allows testing of ALL Propeller board functions over serial with zero use of ROS to more easily ensure the hardware is working before starting ROS.

Build a Robot!

First you need to build a robot!

Parts List

• Robot
• On board computer
• 3D Sensor

This code is based on the Arlo Robotic Platform from Parallax. Unfortunately, the Arlo Robotic Platform has been DISCONTINUED.

You will also need a few other items (Raspberry Pi and 3D sensor) which I have some details about on the Parts List Wiki Page

Building

Follow the excellent Arlo Robot Assembly Guide at Parallax to both assemble and test your Arlo Robot platform.
Be sure you have fully understood and run all of their tests before moving on with using ROS.

Check out my blog: ArloBot Build Index

And also jump on the Parallax Forums and start searching and asking questions!

Because the Arlo platform comes as a kit, building it should be pretty straight forward, but we will all help you out with any problems you run into.
Ask questions in the Parallax Forums, on GitHub and on the ROS for Arlobot Google Group.

Once your robot is built, you can use this package.

Requirements

Operating System

Arlobot operates on ROS Jazzy which requires Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

This repository is built around running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS, which is also what ROS2 requires.

If you put a fresh copy of Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS on your robot’s Raspberry Pi then you can use the installation script below.

You can use Desktop instead of Server if you want, but Server will save memory by not running a desktop environment. This is your choice of course, but I’m using Server.

I suggest using the Raspberry Pi Imager to write the Ubuntu image to your SD card.

I suggest setting a hostname, a user and password and your WiFi. The setup script and instructions should work with whatever non-root user you set up. My username is chrisl8 so anytime you see that you can substitute your own.

Install

There is a script to install everything. Run:

bash <(wget -qO- --no-cache -o /dev/null https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chrisl8/ArloBot/jazzy/setup-jazzy.sh)

Be sure to read the instructions that the script will print at the end about editing the config files in ~/.arlobot/

To update your code run the same script again, and it will pull down and compile anything new without erasing custom settings.

Propeller Code

Please note that you will need the code to run on your Propeller board. This is stored in the “PropellerCodeForArloBot” folder. Details on the Propeller code and setup are here: Propeller Cdoe for Arlobot

You can run the script install_Propeller_code.sh to automatically install the required code to your Propeller Activity Board.

Propeller Serial Interface Test

Before you start trying to get ROS running, but after you have loaded the C code onto the Propeller Activity board, use the PropellerSerialTest to test the hardware and interface.

Place the robot up on blocks, so it won’t drive into anything if it goes nuts, and then run:
~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/scripts/PropellerSerialTest.sh
This provides an interface to send all controls, commands, and settings directly to the Propeller Activity Board without involving ROS. Use this to test everything and make sure your robot’s hardware is functioning before you start playing with ROS.

Serial Test Usage

1. Make sure the robot is on blocks off of the floor so when the motors run it will stay still and not run into anything.
2. On the robot run ~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/scripts/PropellerSerialTest.sh It will not start moving or doing anything yet, but it may soon!
3. The Proximity Sensors, that is the PING and/or InfraRed (IR) sensors, can cause the robot to move to avoid obstacles or refuse to move when commanded to. The bottom row of the status shows their measurements. The second from the bottom row shows if the Propeller Activity Board’s built in safety code has determined if it is safe to move forward or backward or not at all. There is also the line Escaping:False which indicates if the code is attempting to move to get away from something too close.
   Since we are on blocks, let’s turn this off, so it won’t run the motors unless we tell it to. This will prevent it from just driving the wheels in response to you or something close to your test setup.
   Pres s for Settings and then a to ignore All proximity sensors.
   The line next to Settings that says ignoreAllProximitySensors:No will change to ignoreAllProximitySensors:Yes.
4. Next note along the Settings line that pluggedIn is Yes. This will prevent the Propeller Activity Board code from sending any commands to the motor. Normally the only way to override this is through ROS. It is a safety measure that prevents the robot from ever moving if ROS is not running. We will override this now. If you left the Settings menu press s to get back in. Then p for Plugged in to turn that off. pluggedIn:Yes will change to pluggedIn:Yes Now the robot can move.
5. Now q to get out of Settings and m to send Move commands. Use the letters i to make the wheels move the robot forward.
   ** IT WORKS! ** You should probably test all the functions available, but this has at least shown you how to use the test program and that your hardware is working. You can use the Sensor output data to ensure your sensors work and diagnose issues with your hardware or code settings.
   There is also the ability to send Test packets to the robot to check for serious serial errors.
   Note that if you do the r - Run speed test there will be errors. It basically tests the ability for the code to slow down the transfer rate until the connection is stable, so errors will pop up as it attempts to go too fast and then backs off and retries. This is normal.

Quick Start of Entire Robot:

The default install script will actually set up the robot website to start automatically on system boot.
You can see the status of this by running: pm2 log
You will even see the URL to use printed in the log output.

If the Web Interface is not already running, you can start it by hand by running:

~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/startRobot.sh

and point your web browser at the URL it gives you.

If you use Ubuntu there should also be a desktop icon on the robot’s desktop which you can run to do the same thing and bring up this web page on the robot itself.

RViz on Windows

You can install ROS 2 with RViz on your windows host if that is your primary OS, just for watching and controlling navigation.

TODO: Test this and update the instructions in the wiki below: https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Installation/Windows-Install-Binary.html

Running Rviz on Windows

Updating Code

To update your code just run the same script again, and it will pull down and compile anything new without erasing custom settings.

Full Arlobot Setup Instructions:

Complete setup and usage instructions are at my blog:
ArloBot Build Index

Edit your robot’s Description

roscd arlobot_ros/urdf
and then read the Readme.txt file there!

WARNING: BY DEFAULT YOUR ROBOT WILL TRY TO MOVE EVEN WHEN IT IS PLUGGED IN!!!!

NOTE: Robot may be stuck or moving in response to sensors

The Infrared, PING, and “plugged in” state of the robot can prevent it from moving or cause it to move by itself.
Once ROS is running, if you want to ensure that ONLY ROS input causes movement, and that the robot responds to ROS even if the PING or IR sensors sense an obstacle, you can quickly tell it to ignore all sensor input by running:
~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/scripts/ignoreAllSensors.sh
Notice that you must run that AFTER ROS is started, and run it every time you start ROS when testing with sensors ignored.

Basic ROS based usage instructions

Note that you can do everything meaningful via the Web Interface. These instructions and scripts are here for reference, debugging, and learning.
Depending on what you want to do there are different ways to “bring up” the robot with just ROS.
These are the “recipes” that are well tested so far:

Basic TeleOp with 3D sensor use

Note that the start-robot.sh script is the same thing as pressing the “Start ROS” button in the Web Interface.
It helps to make sure that it runs properly from the command line though before relying on the web interface, in case there were setup issues.

# Run:
start-robot.sh
# In a new Terminal:
roslaunch arlobot_ros keyboard_teleop.launch
# From a Terminal in the desktop (NOT over SSH):
view-navigation.sh

Do this:

• Set your Global Options->Fixed Frame to “odom
• Look at the Scan output to see if it is producing an image of the room.
• Drive and see if the robot appears to move properly on the grid.

Slam Toolbox (SLAM Map building)

https://github.com/SteveMacenski/slam_toolbox
Note that the make-map.sh script is the same thing as pressing the “Make Map” button in the Web Interface, and
save-map.sh is the SAME thing as pressing the “Save Map” button in the Web Interface.
It helps to make sure that it runs properly from the command line though before relying on the web interface, in case there were setup issues.

# Run:
start-robot.sh
# In a new Terminal:
make-map.sh
# From a Terminal in the desktop (NOT over SSH):
view-navigation.sh
# When you are done, save your map!
save-map.sh "${HOME}/.arlobot/rosmaps/my_map1"

Do this:

• Ensure obstacles in the 3D Camera view are shown in the local cost map
• Use the “2D Nav Goal” to set destinations for the robot to navigate to.
• Once you have built a map you are happy with, save it.

Localization (Navigating the map we built above

Note that the load-map.sh script is the same thing as pressing the “Load Map” button in the Web Interface, and
save-map.sh is the SAME thing as pressing the “Save Map” button in the Web Interface.
It helps to make sure that it runs properly from the command line though before relying on the web interface, in case there were setup issues.

# Run:
start-robot.sh
# In a new Terminal:
load-map.sh "${HOME}/.arlobot/rosmaps/my_map1"
# From a Terminal in the desktop (NOT over SSH):
view-navigation.sh

Remote Control with an xBox 360 Joystick

Using an xBox 360 Joystick with ROS
This should work as soon as you Start ROS, either with start-robot.sh or with the Web Interface.

Rviz

The easiest way to bring up Rviz is with the script:

view-navigation.sh

In theory one may want to bring this up on a different computer than the robot’s on-board computer. That is possible, especially if you ran the bash setup script on that other computer and selected “Y” to make it a “workstation”. That said, you will need to ensure your ROS environment variables are set up correctly. If you are having trouble either with ROS on your remote workstation saying that it cannot see the robot, or with setting destination snot working in Rviz, check out this page for assistance:

http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/NetworkSetup

Assistance

Please report an issue for any problems or if you need me to clarify anything!
Ask questions in the Parallax Forums, on GitHub and on the ROS for Arlobot Google Group. I will write more documentation as I answer questions, and I hope you will also write instructions when you do your build!

ROS2 Usage and Notes

WiFi and Ethernet

If one of your systems is on a wired Ethernet connection and the other is on WiFi, they will likely be unable to communicate with each other.
It may work intermitently, but never for long.
The intermitent working will lead you to think that you’ve found solutions with alternate DDS services and/or configuration, but it is just a red hearing. The solution is to put all of your systems together on the same WiFi network, assuming you aren’t on a school/company WiFi that isolates clients.

CLI Operation and Sourcing

• You need to source either the base install or your built code before building or running ROS
  • For the base, such as when you want to build code run:
    • source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash
  • But if you already built code and want to run it, source that code’s build, which itself will include the base:
    • ``
• Don’t build and run ROS in the same terminal.

Because of the issues related to building and running ROS the setup script in this repository does not source ROS in your login profile. Instead it is done in the shell scripts that are used to run ROS.

So when running commands be sure to run the source commands first, or use the rosEnvironmentSetup.sh script which also sets other environment variables that I’ve come to find important or useful.

Windows

https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Installation/Windows-Install-Binary.html

Dependencies.

ROS2 for windows is accomplished via a large download along with a lot of dependency installs.

Note that ROS2 is very picky about the Python version. It is hardcoded in a lot of the ROS2 files.

choco install -y python --version 3.8.3
choco install -y vcredist2013 vcredist140 cmake

I’m skipping OpenSSL for now, hoping I can use what I already have installed.

https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vs_community.exe

Qt5

Qt5 is very difficult to find and install, this seems to be the correct installer download location: https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/5.12/5.12.12/

As admin:

setx /m Qt5_DIR C:\Qt\Qt5.12.12\5.12.12\msvc2017_64
setx /m QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH C:\Qt\Qt5.12.12\5.12.12\msvc2017_64\plugins\platforms

Binary Pacakge

I renamed the extracted folder to rso2-jazzy and placed it in D:\

Environment setup

D:\ros2-jazzy\ros2-windows\local_setup.ps1 # Or wherever you put it.

Testing Windows Environment

This should work: ros2 run turtlesim turtlesim_node

As should the other tutorials, which you can use for testing your knowledge, your Windows install and your robot install:
https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Tutorials/Beginner-CLI-Tools/Configuring-ROS2-Environment.html

Testing ROS Interdevice communication

The best test is found on the install page https://docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Installation.html

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

Try this both locally and across remote systems if you hope for them to speak to each other.

Linux Environment Setup

source ~/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 topic list

Scripts

Here is a list of the “convenience scripts” that I have written for Arlobot. Many are used by the web site. All of them can be run directly by you if you need or want to.

All of the functions above also have quick launch scripts. cd ~/dev_ws/src/ArloBot/scripts

Start ROS

Start the robot ROS code:
ros_start.sh

Basic TeleOp with Keyboard

start-keyboard-teleop.sh

Remote Control with an xBox 360 Joystick

This is built into the ros_start.sh script.

Slam Toolbox (SLAM Map building)

make-map.sh
View with rviz:
view-navigation.sh
Save the map:
save-map.sh

Slam Toolbox Localization Mode (Navigating the map we built above)

List available maps:
listMaps.sh
Load the map:
load-map.sh
View with rviz: view-navigation.sh

Shut down ROS and everything related to it

ros_kill.sh

The scripts call ROS files, so you can modify the ROS files listed in the scripts to modify how ROS operates.

Note that xBox 360 Controller operation is always live when ROS is running this way.

Web Based Operation

Finally, the entire robot can be operated from the web.
Go to http://:8080/

All the basic robot operations are available.

• Use the Startup/Shutdown Panel to start ROS.
• Use the Navigation Panel to:
  • Make a new Map
  • Load an existing Map
  • Add waypoints to a map
• Use the Remote Control Panel to control the robot from the website
  • This works well from a smartphone
• Explore all the other options.

The website uses the same scripts from above, so you can modify them, or the ROS files that they call, to modify how ROS operates.

Note that xBox 360 Controller operation is always live when ROS is running from the website.

Convenience Scripts

Look in the scripts folder for a set of handy scripts for starting up and shutting down various aspects of Arlobot.

Tuning

See the RobotTuningNotes for guidance on tuning robot parameters.

List Parameters in use by Slam Toolbox now

ros2 param dump slam_toolbox

HB-25 Motor Controller Support Gone!

Parallax has updated the Arlo platform to use their new DHB-10 Dual H-Bridge controller.
My robot now uses the DHB-10 motor controller.
Unfortunately I do not have time to support two controllers, especially when I only have one. (If I had money and time to build a second robot, maybe I could.)
If you have HB-25 controllers, you can try using the last release that I made that still supported them here:
Old Propeller Code Release

Contributing

All code contributions are greatly welcomed! I almost always accept pull requests. Worst case, I accept it, find an issue, and fix it, but even code that I have to fix up is better than code I have to write from scratch!
Feel free to use this repository for Hacktoberfest or other code contribution events, or just to get your feet wet using git. I’m happy to get spelling corrections and documentation improvements.
I use prettier on my JavaScript code, Black on my Python code, and shfmt on my Bash code to format it. However, I won’t let code formatting prevent me from accepting a pull request. I can tidy it up later.

Post install Testing

Most of this was covered above, but here it is again for myself.

Hardware

Run PropellerSerialTest.sh to ensure hardware communication is working.

ROS Basic Turn-Up works

• Terminal One:
  start-arlbot-only.sh
• Terminal Two:
  source ~/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash ros2 topic list Should look like this:

/arlo_status
/arlobot_safety/safetyStatus
/buttons
/cmd_vel
/infrared_scan
/joint_states
/odom
/parameter_events
/robot_description
/rosout
/tf
/tf_static
/ultrasonic_scan

ros2 topic echo /odom Should spew a steady stream of text too quickly to read, this is the odom coming from the Propeller board.

Wheels go?

This should make wheels go, theoretically drive in a circle, but I put the robot up on blocks at this point: ros2 topic pub /cmd_vel geometry_msgs/msg/Twist "{linear: {x: 2.0, y: 0.0, z: 0.0}, angular: {x: 0.0, y: 0.0, z: 1.8}}"

Some Tuning Notes

Old Noetic Parameters

I’ve started on ROS2 by sticking with defaults, as those tend to work best, however
it is probably worth looking at the old Noetic branch launch and param folders when starting to tweak anything to see if there are old lessons learned that I should carry over.