RiSE Platform Setup

Connections

Battery related

• The NiMH battery packs have 3 white female connectors to power each of the RMC boards
• The small black female connector is used to charge the battery
• The RED button in the rear is ON-OFF power for the robot
• Batteries are considered low or discharged below 13V
• Power for the carrier board is jumpered from one of the RMC plugs
  • You can power/boot the carrier board independently by separating the jumpered RMC connector

Charger

• The Schulze ISL6-330d charger needs a regulated 12.5V supply up to 12A
• A Jameco 12.5V supply is currently being used, but seems to drop down below 12V
• Charging (disconnect battery 1st) - To override low voltage warnings:
  • Hold down the MINUS (-) button when connecting the power supply
  • Scroll to AUTO C with the MINUS (-) and PLUS (+) buttons
  • Plug in a battery (when charger beeps, the battery should be charged (15-16V), unplug the battery and power supply)
  • See the charger manual for additional instructions
• Discharging (start charger same as for Charging)
  • Scroll to AUTO D with the MINUS (-) and PLUS (+) buttons
  • Plug in a battery (when charger beeps, the battery should be discharged(12-13V), unplug the battery and/or power supply)
  • NOTE: To extend battery life, it is good to periodically fully discharge the batteries

General

• The ethernet cable is plugged into the rear, near the tail
• There are special, detachable connectors for connecting a monitor and keyboard directly to the robot (should be in a small pink bubblewrap bag somewhere)
• The robot runs QNX off of a CF card, so make sure the card is fully inserted

Wireless

• There is a wireless server (Netgear ME101) on the tail of the robot that provides wireless commnuications
• A short CROSSOVER ethernet cable goes from the wireless adapter to the main robot ethernet plug
• The wireless adapter requires power (a blue and black line), supplied by the power regulator board
• See StanfordWirelessConfig for more details

Direct connection

• An alternative to the wireless connection is a point-to-point connection
• Connect the RiSE carrier board directly to the operator laptop using a long crossover cable
• Disable the wireless adapter on the laptop
• Set the internet connection on the laptop to a point to point connection
  • The laptop must be on the same subnet as the RiSE platform
  • You must be root to execute this command

ifconfig eth0 my_new_addr pointopoint rise_addr

• The following scripts on tatooine, enable and disable the point-to-point connection (must be root)

/home/sal/configPTP.sh
/home/sal/unconfigPTP.sh

Supervisor (on robot)

• Open a terminal window on the OCU
• Power up the robot (it may take 5 min to fully boot)
  • Try ping surise to see if it is ready
• Log onto the robot (from the OCU)
  • Use ssh rise@surise and enter the passwd
• Change to the Supervisor directory (RoboDevel/RiSE/Supervisor)
  • Use cd RoboDevel/RiSE/Supervisor
• Change to root
  • Use su
• Start the supervisor
  • Use ./start.sh -d
• After finished, quit the supervisor with Ctrl-C and switch the robot power OFF

Updating code

• The code needs to be compiled on a QNX machine, so you'll likely need an acct on the CMU compile host, bassoon.
• Log onto a QNX machine
• Checkout and compile the latest CVS tree
• Copy the necessary files from the QNX compile machine to the robot
  • Use ./upload_all.sh login@machine rise@surise
  • ie. ./upload_all.sh amcclung@bassoon.msl.cmu.ri.edu rise@surise
• DONE!
• NOTE: See RiSEPlatformUpdatingCodeNotes or RiSEHelloWorldTutorial or RisePlatformGaitBuilder for more detailed info

Operator (laptop aka OCU)

• Open a terminal window
• Change to the Operator directory (RoboDevel/RiSE/Operator)
  • Use cd RoboDevel/RiSE/Operator
• Start the OCU GUI
  • Use ./start.sh 3000 surise
• Quit the OCU GUI when finished (while it is running, it searches for the robot and causes network traffic)

Updating code

• You will need a CVS acct on the CMU server, geeveegie, contact Uluc
• For a clean tree, delete the RoboDevel dir
• Checkout the CVS tree
  • Use cvs co RoboDevel
  • At times, you may be able to just use cvs update -d, rather than build a fresh tree
• Compile the tree
  • Use make from the RoboDevel/ directory
• If there are no errors, you're DONE!

-- AMcClung? - 16 Feb 2005