🚀 Getting started guide

This guide walks through the process of building instance of CatixBot - very simple 4-legged robot for your experiments with kinematics 🦾 and computer vision 📷 (the project is under development)

Electronic components

1. Raspberry Pi equipped with Wi-Fi interface (Raspberry Pi 3B or better)
2. Monocular camera compatible with Raspberry Pi (fisheye lenses are better for obstacle avoidance)
3. 8x MG90S servos
4. PCA9685 16-channel driver
5. MPU9250 IMU module
6. 2x voltage regulators to power up separately:
   • PCA9685 connected with 8x servos
   • Raspberry Pi and other low current components

Assemble robot

1. Print all parts provided in 3d-printing-model repository
2. Assemble each part using screws
3. Install all electronic components on the top of the body

Setup Raspberry Pi

Install 'Ubuntu Server'

It is convenient to set up separate Wi-Fi network first. Then, in any place where such a network will be deployed, robots are always guaranteed to share the same environment without additional settings

1. Insert SD card (at least 16Gb is recommended)
2. Install Raspberry Pi Imager
3. Open the installed application and select 'Ubuntu Server 20.04.3' 64-bit to be installed
   
4. Write the image
5. Download user-data and network-config
6. Update hostname in user-data, where '01' should be replaced by 'serial number' of your robot
7. Configure Wi-Fi network credentials in network-config to which the robot will connect to
8. Replace both files in the root of 'system-boot' partition on SD card

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Setup host

1. Install the latest version of VS Code
2. Add Remote Development extension set
3. Add Docker extension
4. Set the value of DOCKER_HOST variable in 'Docker' extension settings: tcp://<docker-host>:2375, where '<docker-host>' is your 'Raspberry Pi' with a docker daemon running

After this step, you can connect to the 'Raspberry Pi' via SSH (user: catix, password: catix) using Remote-SSH extension to follow the next steps

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Setup docker

1. Clone this repository and run the setup script

   $ git clone https://github.com/CatixBot/getting-started-guide.git && cd getting-started-guide
   $ chmod +x ./setup.sh && sudo ./setup.sh
   

2. Restart for the settings to take effect

   $ sudo reboot
   

3. Check that the docker daemon is running

   $ systemctl status docker
   

4. If the daemon has 'failed' status, it is possible to print its launching logs to figure out the reason

   $ journalctl -fu docker
   

5. Check whether docker has been set up correctly by running 'hello-world' image

   $ docker run hello-world
   

6. Go to the 'Docker' tab in VS Code, which contains a list of robot's ROS2 nodes (docker images and containers)

   Finally, it is possible to manage ROS/ROS2 nodes as docker containers