Setting up your computer

The current RoNeX driver is based on ROS. We recommend that you use a computer with Ubuntu LTS 14.04 (“Trusty”) installed on it. You will need less than 1GB of additional disk space for all of the ROS components. Follow the instructions here: Installing ROS Indigo to install ROS Indigo on Ubuntu - we recommend the ros-indigo-desktop-full package.

Connecting RoNex

RoNex can be connected to your computer via an ethernet port, however if you are lacking spare ports, a USB 2.0 to Gigabit ethernet adapter can be used. We have tested RoNex with the StarTech.com USB 2.0 to Gigabit Ethernet NIC Network Adapter.

Installing the drivers for ROS Indigo

This is the easiest and recommended way to install the RoNeX drivers. To install the drivers and their dependencies, simply run:

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-sr-ronex

Using ROS is made much easier by setting up the terminal window and its environment. If indigo is the only ROS version on the computer then you should do:

sudo echo "source /opt/ros/indigo/setup.bash" >> -/.bashrc

Now each new terminal window will have the ROS Indigo environment setup automatically.

If you need to have multiple versions of ROS installed, then using this method would force everyone to use Indigo! If you don’t want to do that, then in each new terminal window you should type:

source /opt/ros/indigo/setup.bash

Installing the drivers for ROS Groovy

Due to some changes to the pr2 code base that were integrated in ROS Indigo only, if you want to use RoNeX with ROS Groovy, you’ll have to install it from sources. This is a more time consuming approach. If you need to go down this route, please follow these instructions.

Setting up a Catkin workspace

If you’re planning on developing code with RoNeX, chances are you’ll be using Catkin to build your programs. Therefore you’re going to need a Catkin workspace, which can be set up following these instructions.

Don’t forget to source the workspace devel/setup.bash file in your .bashrc file to add the packages in the workspace to the ROS environment.