Connect to the Neatos

Normal Usage

Step 1: Grab a battery for the raspberry Pi

Checklist:

1. The battery indicator light should be at least level 2 (preferably full)

Step 2: Choose your Neato

Checklist:

1. Make sure the Neato's batteries are charged. To test this, pull the Neato away from it's charging station and hit the big button next to the Neato's display (the button is orange in the picture below). The display should turn on and stay on revealing a battery capacity indicator. Make sure the capacity is close to full.

Step 3: Connect the USB battery pack to the Raspberry Pi's USB cable.

It should take about 1 minute for the robot to be ready to use (see step 4 for a final checklist).

Checklist:

1. If you are using one of the cables with a small flat connector, make sure it is inserted in the proper direction (yes, it is possible to put it in backwards)

Step 4: Connecting to the Neato from Your Laptop

Checklist before performing this step:

1. Raspberry pi display backlight is illuminated and not flashing on and off (see troubleshooting section for what to do if this is not the case)
2. Raspberry pi display shows that the Neato is connected to the OLIN-ROBOTICS network and has an IP address asssigned to it
3. Raspberry pi display shows that the signal strength of the Neato's connection is at least 45 (the max is 70). Note: if you are in the CompRobo room you should expect the signal strength to be at least 60. If the signal strength is very low see troubleshooting section for information on what to do.
4. Your laptop is connected to the OLIN-ROBOTICS. A good sanity check is to make sure you can ping the robot. You can run ping from the Ubuntu terminal by typing ping IP_ADDRESS_OF_YOUR_ROBOT (if the connection is working you will see the time for each packet to round trip back to your computer).

Next, open up a terminal start roscore:

$ roscore

In a new terminal, connect to the robot:

$ roslaunch neato_node bringup.launch host:=IP_ADDRESS_OF_YOUR_ROBOT

Where IP_ADDRESS_OF_YOUR_ROBOT is the IP address displayed on the raspberry Pi. To verify that everything is working properly,

Viewing Images from the camera

Startup rqt_gui.

$ rosrun rqt_gui rqt_gui

From the "plugins" menu, select the "visualization" submenu, and then choose "image view". In the drop down list, select the image topic camera/image_raw

Moving the Neato around

rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py

Putting the Neato Away

Step 1: Turn Raspberry Pi Off

To do this, use the buttons on the Raspberry Pi. First, press down until you see the text "Press select to Shutdown". Next, press select to shut the Pi down. Note: the button press detection code is a bit finicky, be persistent!

Step 2: Wait for the Pi to completely power off, and then disconnect the battery.

This is really important. If you pull the power to the Pi to soon, the SD card can become corrupted. As the Pi shutsdown you will see the green light flash as the red light stays on persistently. At some point you will see the green light flash on and off at regular intervals (about once a second). Once these flashes are over and you see no more activity for the green LED, the Pi is completely off. At this point it is safe to pull the USB cable from the battery (do not remove the end of the cable attached to the Pi).

Step 3: Put Away Your Toys

Place the Neato back in it's charging dock. Connect the USB battery pack up to the charger.

Checklist:

1. Make sure the two metal connectors on the back of the Neato have made contact with the charging station.
2. Make sure the USB battery is charging (the lights on the battery should turn on momentarily when you plug it in).

Switching the Neato's Batteries

In normal usage you will not have to switch the Neato's batteries. The Neato will charge up just fine in its charging dock. However, for high utilization times, this might not be good enough. I have purchased a bunch of extra batteries to help with these situations. In order for this strategy to work, you have to be able to swap out the old Neato battery for a new one when it runs out.

Step 1: Flip the Neato over

You will have to move the plastic box out of the way first. In order to do this, feed a bit of the mini-USB cable through the hole on the bottom of the box. Next, pull up gently on the box so that the velcro comes apart. Now you can set the box that includes the raspberry Pi aside from the robot, and then safely flip the robot over.

Step 2: Remove the spent batteries from your Neato.

The batteries are underneath plastic covers that are held in by two screws each (see picture below).

Step 3: Select a charger Neato

When Neatos are no longer able to function at their fullest potential, they get repurposed as battery chargers!

Step 4: Flip your charger Neato over and connect the spent batteries

If the there are already batteries in the Neato, check to see if they are fully charged using the procedure described in Step 2 of the Normal Usage section. If they are fully charged, please remove the batteries and put them in the box labeled "charged".

Step 5: Flip the charger Neato back over and place in charging dock

Make sure the batteries are charging (you will see the battery indicator on the LCD display cycle from low to high repeatedly.

Step 6: Grab fresh batteries and put them in your Neato

These are in the box labeled "charged". Once you have inserted the batteries into your Neato, connect the battery leads. Finally, replace the battery covers (using the four screws).

Step 7: Flip your Neato right-side up

Once you do this, you will want to feed the mini-USB cable back through the hole so no slack is hanging out. Finally, place the box back on top of the Neato so the velcro lines up and the box is securely mounted to the Neato's top. You are now ready to go!

Troubleshooting

Symptom: Both the red and green LEDs on the raspberry pi are illuminated and not flashing.

Problem: the Pi was unable to boot from its SD card.

Solution 1: the first thing to check is that the Raspberry Pi's SD card is fully inserted into the Raspberry Pi. See the image below for the location of the SD card. You will know it is fully inserted if you push on the card and it clicks into place.

Solution 2: if the card is fully inserted, the SD card may have become corrupted (possibly because some people didn't properly shut down the Raspberry Pi!). To remedy this, grab an SD card from the green container located in the plastic drawers in AC112. Put the old SD card in the red container in the same plastic drawer.

Symptom: the raspberry Pi display's backlight is flashing on and off.

Problem: the Pi cannot connect to the robot via the USB cable.

Solution: sometimes the Neato will turn off due to inactivity. Press the large button near the Neato display to wake it up. If that doesn't work try unplugging and replugging the USB cable from the raspberry Pi (DO NOT unplug the USB cable from the side connected to the Neato). If that doesn't work, shutdown and then reboot the Pi. If none of this works, the robot battery might be dead. Try recharging the robot. While the robot is recharging, switch to another robot.

Symptom: the Wifi signal strength indicator on the Raspberry Pi is below 40 even though you are right near an access point.

Problem: The Pi has connected to an access point that is not the closest one (this will sometimes happen).

Solution: Assuming the Pi display is at the screen showing the IP address, press right to enter the network setup menu. OLIN-ROBOTICS should be highlighted with an asterisk. Press right again to reconnect the Pi to the Wifi. If it doesn't work the first time, try one more time. If it doesn't work then, switch to a new robot.