Bench Operation

Set-up and Power On

To run the robot on the bench, you will power on the robot with the provided power cable, pictured below. 

Minnebot power cable

The connector is in the rear right battery door, off to the left, just inside the door.

Minnebot power connector.

To power on the robot on the bench, follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that both battery bays are empty (No batteries in the robot). 
  2. Open both of the battery doors and remove for ventilation (operation with only one door removed is possible, but not recommended).
  3. Plug the cable into the robot (with the other end not plugged in).
  4. Plug the cable into the wall or power strip (if using a power strip, switch it off before, then switch it on once plugged in).
  5. Flip the power switch on the back of the robot to the ON position.
  6. The small OLED screen in the back will begin to scroll.
  7. Once the screen displays "AQUA5 MENU", the robot is booted, running ROS, and ready to go.

Tethered Connection

The tethered connection configuration is as follows: 

  • Fiber patch cable screwed into Minnebot, then plugged into the mux. 
  • Muxer power plugged into the USB strip, and Ethernet plugged into the USB strip. Ensure that this is the USB strip labeled "MINNEBOT CONNECTOR"
  • USB strip plugged into the OCU.

This configuration is pictured, without the fiber connection to the robot or the connection to the OCU visible, below.

Minnebot tethered connection

You should plug all of the various connectors and cables into each other first, then plug the USB strip into the OCU.  Once you have, the OCU will automatically run scripts setting up the appropriate connection.  You can do this before or after Minnebot has booted, it does not matter.

Once connected, the OCU will have an ethernet interface named "eth-aqua8", with a static IP set at 192.168.2.14.  Hostnames have been set up appropriately, so if you wish to ssh into the vision stack, you merely run:

ssh vision

Because ssh keys have been set up, this should work without prompting you for a password.

If you would like to ssh into the control stack, run: 

ssh control OR ssh aqua

This requires the control stack password.

The ROS master is located on the vision stack, but all the appropriate environment variable should be set up on the OCU to communicat with ROS already.  To test this, run:

rostopic list

If you see a large list of topics with "aqua" in the name, you're ready to start using your code. If there is a problem, try running roswtf to check what's going wrong.

Wi-Fi Connection

In progress, no procedure yet.