AIRLab survival guide

When you are facing a problem, before starting to browse the Internet and scratch your head, take a look to AIRWiki: it's possible that other users already solved it for you. If you don't find the solution on AIRWiki and have to look elsewhere for it (and possibly do a lot of work), when you finish... add it to AIRWiki!

If you find a page useful and you want to know if someone ever adds other good stuff to it, you can watch the page. Just click on the watch button at the top of the page you're interested in. You will receive an email notification for any update.

To become an AIRLab user

You can find a complete description of the process in the Bureaucracy page, but these are the main stages:

1. enter the AIRWiki community: ask your Advisor to set up an AIRWiki user account for you
2. know what you're doing: learn the safety norms and the AIRLab rules
3. tell the other AIRLab users about you and your work: fill in your AIRWiki user page and set up a project page for your project
4. obtain the certificate of successful completion of the courses about safety (available online at [1])
5. obtain the authorization to physically enter the lab: the procedure is described in the Bureaucracy page

Please note that you will not be authorized if the AIRWiki pages which you have to prepare are not ready.

For AIRWiki Administrators

• AIRWiki:AdminFAQ (FAQs about common admin tasks such as adding users, changing passwords, user renaming, etc.)
• Airpaper (writing a paper? This is a tool to share it with the other authors)
• DEI_Subversion_Administration (this is mainly for faculties)
• AIRWiki:Main (information about this specific AIRWiki installation)
• Are you having problems updating semantic information in the Wiki (i.e. you update it but it is not reflected on the rest of the website)? Check this link for a possible solution to your problem.

Useful Resources

Writing and Reading

• Howto write a thesis? Suggestions to prepare your thesis (only in Italian for now... translators are welcome!).
• Suggestions to write well can help to produce a good thesis, as well as good scientific publications in general. Here is the part of the 14 steps to write well found on the San Francisco Edit company site that Andrea Bonarini shares.
• You can access all the papers for which Politecnico has bought a subscription even when you are at home if you enable the [Politecnico proxy]. The instruction page is provided by the nice people of ASI in Italian only. For an English version of the page, try to poke them if you can find how to get in touch with them.
• Tips for editors of AIRWiki are also collected by this community, just to help to understand some of the hidden beauty of semantic WIKIs.

ROS (Robot Operating System)

• ROS is a framework for the creation of software for robots, providing many useful tools and modules. We are considering its use with our robots. Go to our ROS HOWTO for advice and tutorials.

Software and programming

• Someone wrote some advice about writing code
• Robotics wikibook: a source of design suggestions for robotics, initiated by the EU project BRICS.
• Info about Mathematica
• How to plot using gnuplot in your C/C++ project Gnuplot in cpp
• The ever-growing AIRLab guide about Getting Started With PIC(TM) MCU
• Howto on VCSBC4018 vision board

Hardware

• Go to What's in the AIRLab if you are looking for stuff in the lab
• Need to learn how to solder? Check the following links: 1 2 3
• Need the US name for that bit of mechanics? Use this useful chart. By the way, at the same place you can find other useful stuff of the same type.

Shops

• Some useful addresses and links about shops, stores, factories, online catalogues. With some of them we have partnerships for discounts. You can find information here.

Hardware configuration

• Dei Phd-room (T11) printer configuration instructions.

Producing videos and publishing them

• Usually, at the end of the project, people tend to produce a video and put it on the web. The best way to do this is to produce a video and then send it to Andrea Bonarini to have it published on the YouTube channel of the AIRLab. Then you can put the link wherever you want, hopefully also in the page of your project on AIRWiki, as done, e.g. in ROBOWII

Miscellanea (uncategorized)

• If you are searching the homepage of a DEI professor (or PhD Student) try this Mozilla Firefox plugin.
• For PhDay08 we've set up an Easychair account for paper reviews. Here's a little tutorial for reviewers that might be useful in case you have to review somehing/teach someone how the system works.
• Useful phone numbers, download ODT document or PDF.
• To remove from a surface any sticky remains of the glue or tape you used to affix something to it (e.g., the markers used by LURCH): try this (Pattex Rimuovi Colla). It doesn't damage (most) surfaces.
• Recipes (yes, REAL recipies of special food) from people at AIRLab
• Sometimes, some geeky fun is all you need. Find it here!