What ROS packages should be included on the Enterprise / EDU boot image?

[Joe Tojek]

Please list of the packages you would like to see included from the EDU perspective and include the rationale. I will check with Enterprise for their list and then we can take the diff back to them to make a case for Enterprise to include any additional packages that we identify. Sound good?

[Dustin Webb]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 6:31 AM, Joe Tojek <joe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Please list of the packages you would like to see included from the EDU perspective and include the rationale.  I will check with Enterprise for their list and then we can take the diff back to them to make a case for Enterprise to include any additional packages that we identify.  Sound good?

To start this off with what is probably an obvious suggestion: Gazebo. I'm sure others will come to mind but this was the first.

Cheers,
--
Dustin Webb

[Mac Mason]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Dustin Webb <daemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gazebo.

I'd say: fuerte-desktop-full, and brown-ros-pkg.

--M

--
Julian "Mac" Mason      m...@cs.duke.edu      www.cs.duke.edu/~mac

[Piyush]

Is there a justification for brown-ros-pkg? They have some very useful packages in there, but also has a ton of dependencies.

I would also recommend the following to have some basic drivers:

joystick-drivers

laser-drivers

openni-kinect

camera-drivers

camera-umd (uvc_camera is one of the better usb cam drivers out there)

Piyush

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[Parker Conroy]

I would add:

• Turtlebot 
• openni-kinect
• openni-tracker
  

Parker

[Mac Mason]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Piyush <piy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a justification for brown-ros-pkg? They have some very useful
> packages in there, but also has a ton of dependencies.

Based on the ROS workshop I ran at SIGCSE, there's still a lot of
interest in Creates, and in Parrot quadrotors; Brown provides drivers
for both. (Brown's Create driver, in my experience, is far simpler
than the Turtlebot driver; one node, rather than nested launchfiles.)

> joystick-drivers

+1.

> laser-drivers

+1.

> openni-kinect

+5.

> camera-drivers
> camera-umd (uvc_camera is one of the better usb cam drivers out there)

+1 for having some sort of UVC camera driver package.

--Mac

[Piyush]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Mac Mason <m...@cs.duke.edu> wrote:

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Piyush <piy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a justification for brown-ros-pkg? They have some very useful
> packages in there, but also has a ton of dependencies.

Based on the ROS workshop I ran at SIGCSE, there's still a lot of
interest in Creates, and in Parrot quadrotors; Brown provides drivers
for both. (Brown's Create driver, in my experience, is far simpler
than the Turtlebot driver; one node, rather than nested launchfiles.)

+1 For the Parrot drones. Forgot about those.

I suspect this point might be a bit off topic for this thread, but the Brown create driver uses open loop odometry and IMO is unsuitable for anything other than tele-operation. turtlebot_node contains a single node which can optionally include a gyro. 

 

> joystick-drivers

+1.

> laser-drivers

+1.

> openni-kinect

+5.

> camera-drivers
> camera-umd (uvc_camera is one of the better usb cam drivers out there)

+1 for having some sort of UVC camera driver package.

   --Mac

--
Julian "Mac" Mason      m...@cs.duke.edu      www.cs.duke.edu/~mac

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Piyush

[Bill Smart]

My take on it is that we should include *-desktop-full, and instructions for how to add more; if you want a specific extra set of packages for your class, then add them to the drives (following our instructions) before you hand them out to the students.  I don't think we can second-guess what people will want, given the range of possible users.

I agree that the Turtlebots and Parrot drones are popular.  However, to me, the Turtles are in scope and the Parrots are out of scope (for now).  I think that it all comes back to use cases, again.  Who are we aiming at?  Are we aiming at students who will be likely to be using turtles (yes, in my case).  Are we aiming at students who are aiming to use Parrots (no, in my case).  Of course, my use case is not your use case.  I can see the drives being bundles with the Turtles, but there's an equally-strong argument for bundling them with Parrots, too.

I also see the drives as being self-contained for the first three weeks of class.  Everything you need to do to get through the tutorials and get some simple simulated robots working.  Perhaps to get some simple things working on real robots.  After that, then I think that the variation from user to user (class to class) will be huge, and wonder if the best we can do is to come up with guidelines to build your own USB drive.  Or, perhaps there's a market here for bespoke USB drives (tell me what you need, and I'll deliver 100 drives to your door by the end of the week).

-- Bill

[Joe Tojek]

Thanks Bill, I also want to leverage the use cases as well as the textbook topics to ultimately help determine which ROS packages and extras to include on the image. I will start a thread for use cases shortly.  

[Joe Tojek]

Hi Bill - When you refer to supporting the first 3 weeks of class, would that correspond to the knowledge and skills represented in Labs 0, 1 and 2 in your course found here?    http://classes.engineering.wustl.edu/cse550/labs.html 

On Sunday, June 17, 2012 2:40:36 AM UTC-5, Bill Smart wrote: