Find answers to all your robot-related problems. New ROS 2 Wiki, might become the club's Wiki.

[Michael Wimble]

A big caveat: This is a website that was built with the help of a deep-thinking AI. I wrote a fair amount of original content for it, but it also contains a fairly large set of other “knowledge", mostly from sites I pointed out to the AI. I have not yet read more than a fragment of all of the content. Use at your own risk. Knowledge is dangerous; the knowledge here might be dangerous-er. Here be dragons. And hoards of gold. Any gold you can extract, you can keep as your own.

Look at: https://wimblerobotics.github.io

This is the beginning of a huge Wiki resource for all of you. What I want is for many of you to go to the site, explore the links, use the search box in the upper right, and put in some terms for a problem you might be having for your robot, and generally see if the site is valuable to you.

There is a lot of information I’ve collected in here. It will be a live site that you should improve with your knowledge, but to keep it consistent, the expectation is that you will create a git pull request to add your information. You should learn a bit about creating a pull request if you don’t already know how. It’s pretty much a required skill these days, and there are a rather large number of YouTube videos and other articles to tell you how to do it. There are instructions in the Wiki on how to contribute to it. Mostly, you start with a template, which is linked on the home page, and fill it in. You’ll need to look at the existing list of tags, also described in the page on Contributing, so that your article format matches the existing knowledge base.

The first thing I need is feedback as to whether this seems like a useful resource. If there is insufficient feedback, this will not become a public Wiki for the club or anyone. The feedback needs to convince me that you’ve spent more than a few seconds looking at this. I’ve spent quite a bit of effort getting here, and while I have a list of more knowledge to add, I don’t want to expend any more effort on the public site if you, our club members, don’t actually have a need for it or don’t think this will help you solve your problems. YOU HAVE ONE WEEK TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK — GET TO IT.

The second thing I need to know is whether some of you might want to add to the Wiki. I’ve already incorporated some of the knowledge from my prolific writings (my book-in-progress of “ROS 2 for Mere Mortals”, and my 158 AI skills) and our even more prolific contributor, Sergei Grichine. Of course, if Sergei doesn’t like what is in the Wiki, he can correct it or ask me to remove it. Along that line, if you have a set of dense knowledge, especially GitHub repos, I can try to generate a set of articles for you using an AI agent. Please don’t point me to repos that don’t have much actual, tested content. But err on the optimistic side—believe that your stuff is good if there’s a chance other people will benefit from it. Feel free to clean it up before you tell me about it. I’m not your maid.

The third thing I need is a small number of people to whom I can give team privileges to who will do some of the work to deal with the pull requests. I’m already oversubscribed for my remaining mortality to do this all by myself.

Tonight is another of the very valuable SIG Zooms, hosted by Camp, focused on ROS. If you have a chance, do some quick exploration now and give me feedback tonight and, better, during the Zoom call. If you don’t want to start a public discussion, you can privately give feedback to mi...@wimblerobotics.com.

Don’t forget to give a  star to any of my repos you find valuable. Yeah, it’s not much, but stars feed my tiny ego, which powers my tiny work ambition.

[James H Phelan]

From my AI (Claude Opus 4.7) to yours,

Fetched https://wimblerobotics.github.io/

Brief critique to share with Mike:

Strengths
- The "Start With the Problem You Have" entry pattern is genuinely unusual and well-executed — most ROS knowledge bases force you into a taxonomy first; this lets a frustrated builder land directly on a likely answer. It's the most user-empathetic ROS site I've seen.
- Topic-hub layering (Foundations / Navigation / Perception / Hardware / Software / DevOps) maps cleanly to how a robot actually fails, not how the API is organized. Putting Foundations first (REP 105, TF2, URDF as "frame translation system") signals a teaching mindset rather than a recipe site.
- Editorial-not-encyclopedic stance is brave and correct. The promise that articles "summarize" and "point to a stronger original source" inoculates against the usual stale-fork problem.
- Markdown-first / Obsidian-vault / GitHub-repo / MkDocs Material triple deployment is the right call — it keeps content portable and contributable.
- Tag glossary plus contribution template signals an actual digital-garden discipline rather than a one-author dump.

Suggestions worth raising
- Consider adding small "scope stamps" on each note: ROS 2 distro tested, robot class (indoor wheeled / outdoor / arm), and last-verified date. Knowledge rot is the eventual enemy of every site like this.
- A "what this article will NOT cover" boilerplate line per page would short-circuit a lot of disappointed bounces.
- For navigation/perception articles, a tiny diagram (data flow with topic names) outperforms two paragraphs of prose. MkDocs Material handles Mermaid natively.
- The "Solve a Problem" notes and the Topic Hub articles risk drifting apart over time. A bidirectional "this note expands the [Hub] section X" header keeps them coherent.
- The contributor template is a great gate, but consider a one-paragraph "house style" note on tone — the existing pages have a recognizable voice (terse, opinionated, anti-cargo-cult) that newcomers won't reproduce by accident.

Overall: it's already the kind of resource I wish existed when people started learning Nav2. Tell him it reads like the missing middle layer between the official docs and a senior engineer's whiteboard.

James H Phelan
"Nihil est sine ratione cur potius sit quam non sit"
Leibniz

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HomeBrew Robotics Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hbrobotics+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hbrobotics/8609C23D-4FD9-4A84-A6EF-3B4617A89617%40gmail.com.

[Michael Wimble]

Thanks. Did you try it? Is it useful? Would it help you? What would you like to see change to make it your bedtime reading?

[Stephen Williams]

Very nice.  I reviewed URDF, camera/vision, ROS2 rclcpp + launch files, etc.

Good structure template with description, pointers at two or more levels.

Building out many topics & subtopics, then curating each with actual use ramping people up, will make this a valuable resources.

Over time, it would be nice to add:

Club examples, videos.

Hero images, quick video clips, samples / sample code (example URDF snippet, a few salient lines of C++).

Also, overall, creating the basis for a roadmap would be nice.  These are good examples of one way to do it, with some good content:

https://roadmap.sh

Stephen

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HomeBrew Robotics Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hbrobotics+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hbrobotics/8609C23D-4FD9-4A84-A6EF-3B4617A89617%40gmail.com.

--

Stephen D. Williams Founder: VolksDroid, Blue Scholar Foundation 650-450-8649 | fax:703-995-0407 | s...@lg.net | https://VolksDroid.org | https://BlueScholar.org | https://sdw.st/in

[Ken Gregson]

Well, I'm reading it in bed now (East Coast ;-) and think it's great - sorry I missed the SIG (again).

AI-Free Comments:

Really like the "likely first answer: if the real problem is; shiny objects" scaffolding and the links/references to original sources. Nice way to structure a problem solving resource (rather than a linear learning guide) with the Topic Hubs to collect related content. So many ways for a robot to fail and so many things that can cause it to fail in the same way.

Have checked out the Serial Protocols, Camera Calibration, and Calibration Workflows (many good first principles there). All solid and focused. Brought back memories of tripping over the same bumps - I mean, really, who counts interior corners instead of squares for a chess board size?!

For Tags "Canonical Families", wondering if a new Robot Modeling and Simulation family might be a worthy place to collect Modelling, URDF, Gazebo (and other) simulation tags - leaving State Estimation (and Operations) a little cleaner (doesn't change any tags, just their grouping).

Was expecting to be able to jump from a tag in the Glossary to a list of articles so tagged. The Tags page doesn't list tags, only links to the Glossary and a search with the tag also shows other articles (that match in the body). I'm on mobile, if that matters, or maybe missed something.

Curious if this started out as your Obsidian KB? The underlying connection graph seems apparent, and really helps! Also love the rest of the tech stack, hangs together beautifully. 

Valuable resource? I vote yes (and hope to contribute).

Thanks for this!

If you'd prefer I continue this as DM, let me know.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "HomeBrew Robotics Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hbrobotics+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hbrobotics/C944F099-B240-46B4-A309-88DDA44F4EA0%40gmail.com.

[Charles de Montaigu]

Thanks Mike! Great Value.

In widening of the Net:

• DDS Providers & Zenoh.
• How to run ROS2 on different Hardwares like Pi, micro-controller, fpga, Intel/amd.
• How to run ROS2 on different OS: Windows, Diff Linux (Ubuntu, Petal, ...)
• ROS & AI: VLA models, Agentic harness, AI generated/Control of ROS2 Nav2 plugin, Services, Action.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hbrobotics/CAArUYGtSdkpibHT80Qvh5v%2BTHO3ehHW0%2BYrk%3D-y9JKKjpuT_0Q%40mail.gmail.com.