Truck Computer Overview and Configuration

The truck has an industrial computer which runs a Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu (14.04) and an LTS release of ROS (Indigo). These releases are intended to give long-term stability to the system.

Networking

The truck has a USB wireless network card, and is assigned a static IP based on MAC address by the DHCP server in the router.

Connecting the Robots Wireless Network

The ssid for the network is minireach_network (alternatively minireach_network_5G) and the password is minireach.

Clock Synchronization

It is recommended to install the chrony NTP client on both trucks and desktops in order to keep their time synchronized. To install chrony on Ubuntu:

> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get install chrony

Upstart Services

Minireach uses robot_upstart to start and manage various services on the truck.

Upstart service can be restart with the service command. For instance, to restart the truck drivers:

>sudo service minireach stop
>sudo service minireach start

Log Files

A number of log files are created on the truck. The most recent logs related to robot_upstart services can be viewed using: sudo tail /var/log/upstart/minireach.log -n 30