dteal/rasware

A generic robotics controller for the EK-LM4F120XL Stellaris Launchpad.

Rasware

Description

Rasware is a generic robotics library project for the EK-LM4F120XL Stellaris Launchpad, built on top of StellarisWare. It is intended to be used for UT RAS's Robotathon competition as well as general purpose robotics projects. Authored by the IEEE - Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch at the University of Texas at Austin. For documentation, see Rasware's Github wiki.

This fork contains the source code for the robot "Ultron" built for the fall 2015 Robotathon competition.

The robot has a left and right drive motor, two intake motors, and one marble/ping-pong ball release motor. It also uses three IR distance sensors.

This program assumes the robot is placed in front of its goal facing right. It runs a loop in which it follows the wall on the right-hand side with the intake runing, and pauses to score whenever the third IR sensor detects a goal by its difference from the normal side IR sensor.

Sensor values are continually averaged for more reliable values. Additionally, several sanity checks are in place: after a goal is detected, it must be present (on average) for some time before triggering a scoring response. This avoids false positives. Also, there is a minimum time constraint between different goals that must be met before scoring.

A video of the final match is on YouTube. Mechanical CAD files for Ultron may be found on GrabCAD.

Robotathon Setup Instructions

Get started with Git

1. Create a free GitHub account on github.com
2. If you want to learn more about Git, you can read the GitPro book online for free (and legally, too!) at http://git-scm.com/book

Fork Rasware (only one Robotathon team member should do this step)

1. Once logged into GitHub, go to ut-ras's Rasware.
2. Fork the project's code through the button on the top right. This will copy the project to your own account.
3. On the team's forked repository Github page, go to Settings -> Collaborators and add each team member as a collaborator

The remainder of the instructions will depend on what type of system you're running. If you are running Windows 10, you may have better luck with the VMware, otherwise we suggest Virtual Box for Windows users.

Setup for Windows (with Virtual Box)

Install Virtual Box

1. Download and install Virtual Box.
2. Oracle's Virtual Box is a hypervisor that lets us run a controlled environment for writing and flashing code.
3. The "Host Machine" refers to your physical computer, so you will want the installer for "Windows Hosts"

Download the RASBox Image

1. Download RASBox.
2. Launch Oracle Virtual Box.
3. Import the RASBox Image by selecting File -> Import Appliance and navigating to the downloaded file.
4. Once imported, there should be a rasbox VM listed in Virtual Box. Select it and click start to launch the VM.
5. The user name is ras and there is no password.

Forward USB

1. Plug in a Launchpad to your computer. If you don't have a Launchpad available this step can be done later.
2. In the RASBox VM, select Machine -> Settings and select the USB settings.
3. Click the little USB symbol with the + sign, select the Texas Instruments In-Circuit Debug Interface device, and click OK.
4. Once selected, replugging in the Launchpad should be detected by the RASBox.

Install PuTTY (Optional but suggested)

1. Download putty.exe.
2. Putty is an incredibly useful little tool for terminal connections in Windows.
3. In the VirtualBox Manager, select File -> Preferences, select Network, select Host-only Networks, and then select the little screwdriver symbol.
4. Change the IPv4 Address to 20.0.0.1 and hit OK until all the windows are gone.
5. Launch Putty and set the hostname to ras@20.0.0.8 which is the default username and IP address of the RASBox.
6. You may want to also give the session a name and save it.
7. Click Open to create an SSH connection to the RASBox.

Using the Terminal

1. You should now be presented with a terminal showing something like ras@rasbox:~$ . This is known as a shell or command line which is the main interface for using our system.
2. Here is a quick introduction (part 1, part 2) in using the shell.
3. To edit files, nano is suggested for new users. You can edit a file, for example hello.txt below, by typing the following into the shell.

  nano hello.txt

Jump to the Linux Instructions

1. Follow the rest of the instructions on how to use Rasware from the clone rasware step in the Linux instructions.

Setup for Windows (with VMware)

Install VMware

1. Download and install VMware Workstation Player.
2. WMware Player is a hypervisor that lets us run a controlled environment for writing and flashing code.

Download the RASBox Image

1. Download RASBox.
2. Launch VMware Player.
3. Import the RASBox Image by selecting Open a Virtual Machine and navigating to the downloaded file.
4. If the import fails due to not passing OVF specifications or Virtual hardware compliance checks, just try again with checks relaxed.
5. Once imported, there should be a rasbox VM listed in VMware. Double click on it to launch the VM.
6. The user name is ras and there is no password.
7. First we need to set up the RASBox to use the available network interfaces. Find the available interfaces with the following command.

  ip link show

8. In the output there should be several interfaces with names like eno16777736. We should expect two different interfaces.
9. Run the following command with each interface to set up DHCP.

  sudo systemctl enable dhcpcd@<interface>

10. You should reboot to make sure the changes stick.

  sudo reboot now

11. You can check to make sure the network is working by pinging some website like google.

  ping www.gogle.com

Forward USB

1. Plug in a Launchpad to your computer. If you don't have a Launchpad available this step can be done later.
2. In the RASBox VM, select Player -> Removable Devices -> Luminary Micro ICDI and select Connect.

Install PuTTY (Optional but suggested)

1. Download putty.exe.
2. Putty is an incredibly useful little tool for terminal connections in Windows.
3. In VMWare, run the following command to find the ip address of the RASBox.

  ip addr show

4. Somewhere in the output there should be something like inet 192.168.186.128, this is your IP address. We most likely want the last one listed.
5. Launch Putty and set the hostname to ras@<ip address>.
6. You may want to also give the session a name and save it.
7. Click Open to create an SSH connection to the RASBox.

Using the Terminal

1. You should now be presented with a terminal showing something like ras@rasbox:~$ . This is known as a shell or command line which is the main interface for using our system.
2. Here is a quick introduction (part 1, part 2) in using the shell.
3. To edit files, nano is suggested for new users. You can edit a file, for example hello.txt below, by typing the following into the shell.

  nano hello.txt

Jump to the Linux Instructions

1. Follow the rest of the instructions on how to use Rasware from the clone rasware step in the Linux instructions.

Setup for Mac

Install Dependencies

1. Install Homebrew: link (Installation instructions are at the bottom of the page.)
2. Install OpenOCD through Homebrew in a terminal.

  brew install openocd

3. Download the Cross Compilers for the LM4F from here (download the one for Mac) and extract.
4. Download StellarisWare, and extract.

Clone Rasware

1. Use git to clone Rasware.

  git clone https://github.com/username/Rasware.git

Modify the Makefiles to point to tools

1. In Rasware, open up RASLib/Makefile with your favorite text editor and change the line containing the PREFIX variable.

  PREFIX := ../../gcc-arm-none-eabi-*/bin/arm-none-eabi-

2. Also change the line containing the STELLARIS and CORTEXM4 variabls.

  STELLARIS = ../../StellarisWare
  CORTEXM4 = ../../CortexM4Libs

3. Compile RASLib.

  cd Rasware/RASLib
  make

Jump to the Linux Instructions

1. If everything has worked so far, follow the rest of the instructions on how to use Rasware from the compile and run rasdemo step in the Linux instructions.

Setup for Linux

These instructions are written for use in a terminal (xterm, gterm, kterm, tty1, etc.) and assume that you have already installed, and are familiar with, your favorite text editor. If you have not found a favorite text editor, I recomend you take a look at Vim, Emacs, and SublimeText2.

Setup a Directory

1. Create a directory to work in. This is where we will place everything.

  mkdir ras
  cd ras

Install Dependencies

1. First install the basic dependencies

• Archlinux : sudo pacman -S git base-devel openocd screen arm-none-eabi-gcc arm-none-eabi-gdb arm-none-eabi-newlib
• Ubuntu/Debian : sudo apt-get install git build-essential openocd screen gcc-arm-none-eabi gdb-arm-none-eabi libnewlib-arm-none-eabi

Download StellarisWare

1. Download StellarisWare, the TI library.
2. Uncompress the file, compile StellarisWare, and move it to /usr/local/lib.

  tar vfx StellarisWare.tar.bz2
  cd StellarisWare
  make
  cd ..
  sudo mv StellarisWare /usr/local/lib
  rm StellarisWare.tar.bz2

Add the LM4F rule to UDev

1. To avoid needing root access to communicate with the lm4f, you will need to copy the lm4f rule to the udev directory.

  wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ut-ras/Rasware/master/RASLib/51-lm4f.rules
  sudo mv 51-lm4f.rules /etc/udev/rules.d

2. Trigger udev for the new rules to come into effect.

  sudo udevadm control --reload
  sudo udevadm trigger

3. Plug in a Stellaris Launchpad. you should now see the file /dev/lm4f.

Clone Rasware

1. Use git to clone Rasware.

  git clone https://github.com/username/Rasware.git

2. Compile RASLib by using the make program.

  cd Rasware/RASLib
  make

Compile and run RASDemo

1. We have created an example project to demonstrate Rasware running on a Launchpad.
2. Compile RASDemo.

  cd Rasware/RASDemo
  make

3. To flash RASDemo to the board, we use make with different arguments.

  make flash

4. If a launchpad is plugged in, the special file /dev/lm4f should be available. You can use make to create a terminal over UART.

  make uart

5. You should now be presented with the RASDemo menu. Feel free to mess around and look into RASDemo's source code to see how it is done. To exit press C-a k y, or control-A followed by a K followed by a Y.

6. If you don't want to do all of the above steps each time, you can run everything with one command.

  make run

Committing code back to your repo

1. Before you start, you should configure git with both your username and email.

  git config --global user.name "User Name"
  git config --global user.email "your@email.here"

2. Git will keep track of any changes to your directory. You can use the status command to show the state of git.

  git status

3. To track a file, you can use the add command.

  git add filename

4. You can now use the commit command to create a commit containing all of the modifications of the files you git added. It will open an editor for writing a commit message. If saved, the commit will be created.

  git commit

5. To move your local changes to the server, use the push command.

  git push origin master

Fin