Planning to setup a youtube video tutorial series for starting up the PR2

[Whitchurch Rajkumar]

Hi members,

My name is Whitchurch Muthumani. I am a student at Arizona State University.

My Professor who recently moved to ASU, has brought a PR2 robot along with him.

I have been tasked with setting up the robot and getting it to move.

I felt it would be great to make a youtube video series on how to hook up the robot, set things up, from the point of view of a total beginner (which I am).

I was wondering if experts in the community would help me in this personal project, my hope is once the videos are available freely on youtube, anyone from anywhere with a PR2 can watch the videos and set things up.  (Reading a non-interactive manual is boring)

If anyone here is willing to collaborate with me, a knowledge transfer will be of great use for us to make the videos and help the community

PS:

- That being said: I am currently reading the documentation PDF as well as poking around to robot ports to understand what is going on.  

- I also hooked up the basestation to the WAN, but now I need to figure out how to connect it to the schools network.

As a first step in my process. I am working on testing out the teleop_teleop_joystick.launch to see if the robot moves.

Thank you

Whitchurch

[Michael Görner]

Hey Whitchurch,

welcome to the group.

Your Linkedin says:
- The goal is to wrap all this up within the next 30 days.

That sounds ambitious. :-)
Feel free to reach out to me for anything regarding the software
stacks. It would be great to have such a resource, even though you
should really not have to setup a PR2 as "a total beginner"; it's quite
the task. And advanced users likely prefer text/schematics over
instruction videos.

Major pitfalls for all of this are (1) most groups at least somewhat
customized major parts in hardware and/or software so setting up "the"
PR2 is not as standardized as, e.g., a TIAGo or Fetch, and (2) you have
to document a lot of ROS one aspects. While I'm a huge proponent of
keeping ROS working as-is in the future, all major ROS-related community
efforts focus on ROS2, but I'm not aware of any serious effort to setup
the PR2 with ROS2.

Best,

Michael / v4hn

--
Michael 'v4hn' Görner, M.Sc. Cognitive Science, Research Associate
Universität Hamburg
Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences
Department of Informatics
Group Technical Aspects of Multimodal Systems

Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30
D-22527 Hamburg

Room: F-315
Phone: +49 40 42883-2432
Website: https://tams.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/people/goerner/

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi,

I was a maintainer of PR2 at Univ. Tokyo.

I can help some part, but most researcher customize their PR2, so it is hard to find the better way for beginners.

I also want to know which ubuntu version you will install in PR2.

If your PR2 is already installed, please try pr2 launch and calibration.

If you cannot servo on your PR2, your PR2 may have hardware issue, like slip rings and motor drivers.

Can you share more info about your PR2 and what you want to do?

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[Whitchurch Rajkumar]

Hi Shingo & Michael,

Thanks for offering to help me with your expertise.  Today I was working on connecting the BaseStation to the PR2 robot, via the service port.

These were the steps which I followed outlined below:  I ran into issue trying to SSH into the PR2 service port. I have put my screenshots and steps below.

Step 1: I connect ethernet cable from LAN0 port on PR2 Base Station

Step 2: I connect the other end to the PR2 robot service port.

I then tried to follow these instructions:

1. Turn on Robot

2. Connect ethernet to robot service port.

3. ssh pr2a...@10.68.0.1 password: willow

4. Roscore

5. Open up new tab in terminal

6. Ssh pr2a...@10.68.0.1

7. Roslaunch /etc/ros/robot.launch

8. Open up new tab/terminal

9. Ssh pr2a...@10.68.0.1

10. Roslaunch pr2_teleop teleop_joystick.launch

 

I got the following message while trying to SSH into : 10.68.0.1.

 (C1 computer of the PR2 robot, i think this is the one that controls the motors)

[Note: I also tried as root user, but the same message, it seems unable to connect]

However, I got some partial success when SSH into the Wireless Router (10.68.0.5)

So clearly SSH works at least in some places.

I am also sending the pictures of the robot LED lights, they look RED at the base of the robot. I am assuming this means they have booted up successfuly:

I initially wanted to see if at least a simple direct/physical connection from BaseStation to PR2 service port would work. I am hoping I did something wrong, so that it can be corrected. 

Thanks

Whitchurch 

[Whitchurch Rajkumar]

Hi Shingo,

I tried to setup the BaseStation to link with the PR2 (via the service port)

I just posted my progress, and the roadblock I hit while trying to get the BaseStation connected to the PR2 service port.

Do have a look at it, and let me know, if I made a mistake somewhere in the process.

Thank you

Whitchurch

[Hamoudy]

Hi, I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I have been tinkering and working on the PR2 here at UTS to much success this past year and learned a great deal doing it. I managed to get most of the robot's functions working on ros noetic from a fresh Ubuntu install. It may take a while but definitely not impossible. I'd be happy to help where needed but I can't garentee fast responses due to the difference in timezones, but I'll do my best. 

It helps to first know a bit about your PR2, does it have the indego upgrade? has the cpu or any other hardware been changed or upgraded? 

Once the details are mostly figured out you can try log directly into the pc. Note, a very common thing is for the BIOS CMOS battery to die, this shows a message on screen with a warning, you need to press any key to continue. if your bios CMOS battery is dead, it's likely that c1 and c2 (the two pc's in the pr2) are not booting up yet.

In the last image you sent, the two black panels are removable and should expose a Display Port and USB. you should be able to plug a monitor into it to find out whats wrong with the network config/ssh.

Later I can help you setup the Linux side of things should you choose to do a fresh Ubuntu install. You should always keep a backup.

Regards 

Muhammad 

[Whitchurch Rajkumar]

Hi Muhammad,

Thank you so much for the helpful guidance. Were you part of Marc Carmichael's team at UTS. I think I might have come across your profile  on linkedln while searching for PR2 experts online :). I look forward working with you to get our PR2 back to life.

As for your questions:

- PR2, does it have the indego upgrade?  - 

The PR2 was moved after 10 years from another university (where it was gathering dust) over to ASU, so I have no idea what upgrade is there.

If there was a way for me to get into either the c1 or c2 computers in the PR2, I could find that out. Is there a way to do that?  (currently ssh 10.68.0.1 from base station to Pr2 via robot service port is not working, an alternate way to access c1 and c2 should give me eyes into the system)

- has the cpu or any other hardware been changed or upgraded? 

If there was a way for me to get into either the c1 or c2 computers in the PR2, I could find that out. Is there a way to do that?

In the last image you sent, the two black panels are removable and should expose a Display Port and USB. you should be able to plug a monitor into it to find out whats wrong with the network config/ssh. 

- Yes, tomorrow I will go and try opening the panels to access the Display Port and USB, 

"Note, a very common thing is for the BIOS CMOS battery to die, this shows a message on screen with a warning, you need to press any key to continue. if your bios CMOS battery is dead, it's likely that c1 and c2 (the two pc's in the pr2) are not booting up yet."

- Will I be able to see this message, if i open the two black panels and plug in the display. to verify this message.

Thank you for your help. I will get back with more information, tomorrow.

Regards,

Whitchurch 

[Michal Kapinus]

Hi,

I am afraid that if the PR2 was turned off for 10 years, the CMOS battery would almost certainly be dead, and it probably would not have the Indigo upgrade. If that is the case, to access the VGA/DVI port, you need to remove the computer from the robot (at least partly, you can see the attached photos of how we accessed it) because the ports are on the backside. After that, you can try to boot the computer with a display connected to see if the problem is the CMOS battery. If so, you need to remove the computer completely from the robot and open it to replace the battery. In our case, we had to use a bit of brute force to open the computers (we used a drill), but after that, everything ran smoothly :-)

I hope it will help you a bit

Best regards

Michal Kapinus

Brno University of Technology

čt 18. 5. 2023 v 18:37 odesílatel Whitchurch Rajkumar <neoblac...@gmail.com> napsal:

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[Whitchurch Rajkumar]

Thank you all for your helpful guidance.

- As suggested, I am planning to open the base cover to access the PR2 computers C1 and C2 to see whats happening during booting.

- I also did some more poking with the wireless router (10.68.0.5). I was able to access the router settings via the browser:

This is what I see:

I then connected a Samsung Tablet to the SSID: ROBOT_LAN

I could see it show up in the DHCP client list in the settings page of the wireless router: http://10.68.0.5

Is there a way to somehow enter the robot internal network , using this wireless entry point.  

or

Is dismantling the base to reach the computer C1 and C2 investigating what is happening in there the way forward.

Thank you

Whitchurch 

[Whitchurch Muthumani]

Friends, so after much struggle the base cover was removed.

To my surprise I found a bunch of cables not connected:

I am attaching the screenshot of the cables which were no longer connected:

They are:

1) Ethernet
2) Serial hub

3) Some unknown cable with AIZO plug on it.

I am attaching the screenshots below for your reference.  I am planning to eventually take out the PCs attach the VGA display and see what happens during bootup.

Before which , I just wanted to make sure, if these wires not being connected was something expected or out of the ordinary.

Thank you

Whitchurch