Instructions

Instead of installing all dependencies, can use Docker premade images from the Docker Hub: docker pull osrf/ros:noetic-desktop-full This command installs the ROS environment you need to run your packages with the installed containers that contain all dependencies. You need to mount the file directory of your project onto the virtual environment build from Docker. The command may look something like:

docker run -it -v --name <container_name> --network host $(pwd):/<project_directory_name> osrf/ros:noetic-desktop-full bash

or the command may first start off as:

docker run -it -v $(pwd):/<project_directory_name> osrf/ros:noetic-desktop-full bash

Next, download all the dependencies. For example, execute the commands: apt install ros-noetic-serial and apt install libeigen3-dev If it doesn’t work, try updating the library/package manager using apt update then try installing the dependencies again. Run apt install git to install git into your environment. Move into your src directory, then verify if you have all the source code repositories contained in it. Install as needed. At this point, you would usually just have your src folder within your main project folder in root. To produce the build and devel folder alongside your src, you can run catkin_make to setup your compiled ROS builds for your project. Move into your devel folder, and run . setup.bash or source setup.bash to setup your ROS environment variables, such as the ROS distribution to be used (e.g. noetic, humble, etc), ROS package paths, and so on. Finally, launch your project software in the compiled ROS environment using the command roslaunch or roslaunch <source_code_directory_name> <source_code_directory_name>.launch

IF launch process cannot run the interface DO Setup Xserver in your Docker container with xhost +local:docker After, run the ROS environment in your Docker container using:

docker run -it --name <project_container_name> --env="DISPLAY=$DISPLAY" --env="QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1" --volume="/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" --net=host -v $(pwd):/<project_directory> osrf/ros:noetic-desktop-full bash

Note that the --net=host is an optional flag, but is important when working with local network configs later on. Run apt update then run apt install tmux to install the terminal multiplexer for the next steps. Use the terminal multiplexer to setup dual shells with tmux On the first terminal, execute roscore On the second terminal, execute rviz to launch the RViz interface. Now you should be able to use RViz.

Prerequisites (packages) to install in ROS-Docker CLI

Install the following packages using apt install after running sudo apt update:

  • ros-noetic-serial
  • libeigen3-dev
  • x11-apps
  • tmux
  • git

ELSE DO Now, exit the Docker terminal and return to the Ubuntu interface. You can do this using exit and it should close. You can purge Postfix with these commands (verify that you don’t need it first before running this process):

  1. sudo apt-get –purge remove postfix -y
  2. sudo apt-get autoremove -y
  3. sudo apt-get autoclean
  4. sudo apt-get -f install

You should now be able to install the X11 apps needed to run the GUI, specifically for your RViz interface. Run the following process to install the GUI packages: sudo apt install x11-apps Test to see if one of the app widget GUIs work (like the clock) using xclock Run xhost +local:docker to modify access for local connections. Go back into the Docker terminal (ROS environment) and cd into devel then run the command . setup.bash to source the variables. Launch the project again.

Starting a Docker container

Run the command docker start -ai <container_id> where the container_id can be the Docker container byte string (ID) or the container name. If you use the ID string, you can just use the first few alphanumeric characters/digits as the identifier to make things faster (instead of writing out the entire byte string ID). To list out all generated Docker containers in your system environment, run the command docker ps -a.

Information

docker run is creating a container from an image. docker start runs the current container that already exists. Insert drive on M2 slot in motherboard to flash a Ubuntu OS on your laptop. In the workspace folder (once you’re in the ROS Docker terminal) you can git clone other relevant source codes and contain it all in a src folder. Next you run catkin_make to build the ROS environment and compile the source code. In your main project directory root, you will see a build folder, a devel folder, and a src folder (which contains all the folders containing relevant source code and software). You may want to setup the environment variables using the command: . setup.bash which uses the . alias of source to execute the .bash script, preparing the environment for ROS. Then, launch the ROS environment and boot your project through it using: roslaunch <project_name> <project_name>.launch Some networking modules have two modes:

  1. Configuration mode - AT commands have specific baud rate
  2. Working mode - baud rate may be different for software operation