Viam Simple Sensor

This project shows how to quickly integrate custom sensors into or viam managed robots.

If you need to set up a robot on viam please see the setup viam readme.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/shawnbmccarthy/viam-simple-sensor
cd viam-simple-sensor
./setup_venv.sh

This will set up our python virtual environment and install the required packages

Configure Robots remote resources

The viam server component interface allows us to create custom components which interface with the viam-server using the viam SDK's. Our example makes use of the Python SDK to create custom sensors.

log into app.viam.com
access the robot you configured, and go to the remotes tab

give the remote a name, for this example lets use simple-sensor, next select Create Remote, this will show the next page:

in the Heading Info text box enter localhost:9090, this is the default binding that sensor_remotes.py is configured for. Now click Save Config at the bottom of the page, a confirmation message will appear.

Now that we have created our remote resource, we can start our proces

# run from viam-simple-sensor
./sensor_remotes.sh -l DEBUG

This will start a remote process with DEBUG log level. By default, only WARNING and above are logged, you should see the output below:

2022-12-14 01:08:42,088         INFO    viam.rpc.server (server.py:81)  Serving on localhost:9090

Now go back to app.viam.com and select the Control tab of your robot and select Sensors, here we can select Get All Readings to see the output

To see how the code works view: static_sensor.py and sensor_remotes.py

script usage

Below are the options that can be used

./sensor_remotes.sh -h
usage: sensor_remotes.py [-h] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--log {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR,FATAL}]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --host HOST, -n HOST  hostname/ip rpc server will bind to
  --port PORT, -p PORT  port number to store
  --log {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR,FATAL}, -l {DEBUG,INFO,WARNING,ERROR,FATAL}
                        log level to use

With no options the defaults are:

host = localhost
port = 9090
log = WARNING

Further activities

We can also configure our viam server to manage the remote process, ensuring that when viam server is running the remote server will also run.

contact

For any questions, please email me at: shawn@viam.com