Set Up ALEN’s New PC and Other Things

I set up ALEN’s new PC today.

• Installed Ubuntu 11.10 desktop with three users (alen, mobile robotics, esv)
• Installed ROS Electric
• Installed CWRU ROS stacks for the user Alen
• Installed ssh server
• Installed git
• Uninstalled games, Thunderbird, social/IM clients

I did inventory on the Bosch rail in the lab. We’ve got more than enough for my purposes, including four 48” rails. Most of my pieces will be cut from pieces salvaged from ALEN. The 20.55” pieces will be cut from some 35.5” pieces that I found in the storage room.

In between installing things on ALEN’s new PC, I played around with RAPID some more. This time, I was able to get a program to compile and even run on the IRB120. My program was just a command to move the arm, but I need to play with the coordinates I was sending it to because it was objecting to the command (unreachable poses and/or too much movement in one command). The good news is that I’ve proven I can get RAPID code to run on this thing. It’s not that important that I can get anything more advanced running for hard-coded stuff because it’s all going to be listening on the ROS gateway. I think the next step is to find out how to control it using RRI.

I also did some cleaning in the Hallway of Stuff(TM). I threw out some worthless plastic scraps and removed everything that wasn’t aluminum from the aluminum scrap bin. That scrap bin is probably worth a couple hundred dollars. If Newman’s ever short on cash for the project, I may remind him of that. My hope is that if I keep cleaning up bits and pieces of the lab, it might actually be clean and organized by the time I get out of here. (Quite the noble legacy.)