Talk:RoboTower

Source code

All the code for the project is hosted on github. The repository can be browsed here.

Stickers for RFID tags

• PDFs of the stickers that have been applied on the RFID tags: sheet 1 and sheet 2 (print them on polyester adhesives)
• Adobe Illustrator sources of the stickers and the images of RFID stickers used to represent them in the GUI

Progettazione del gioco

• Come abbiamo progettato il gioco (linee guida, idee scartate/preliminari, etc) link al documento
• Una prima bozza dello storyboard: RobotowerStoryboard.pdf

Working notes about some of the used tools

ROS

• Qui c'è una nostra [media:miniguidaROS.pdf|guida] con i comandi principali e il codice di nodi di esempio (presi dai tutorial), sia per C++ che per Python

STM32F4 Discovery: notes

To manage the devices added to the robot, we used a STM32F4 Discovery Board. We built the firmware with the chibiOS/RT Operating System.

The board is equipped with an ST-Link v2 programmer, that seems to be officially supported on Windows only. It works on Linux with two methods: using the stlink utility (https://github.com/texane/stlink) or using OpenOCD (you need to build it from git, as stlink support is experimental).

OpenOCD configuration

As stlink support provided by openOCD is still experimental, it has to be explicitly enabled while compiling the sources. After downloading the latest sources from the git repository (the URL should be http://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=git&group_id=274635), compile and install issuing:

    $ ./configure --enable-maintainer-mode --enable-stlink
    $ make
    # make install    (this is needed only to install the binaries system-wide, and must be performed by root)

Starting OpenOCD

When openOCD is correctly configure, it can be started with the command

    $ openocd -f board/stm32f4discovery.cfg

(assuming that the board is connected to the computer).

NB: sometimes the board is not recognized (it happens to me frequently when chibiOS is flashed on the board), and neither openocd nor texane's stlink can connect to the board. In this case, keeping the "reset" button on the board pressed while launching openocd should solve this issue. If this doesn't solve, use the ST Visual Programmer utility (windows only, sorry) to erase the FLASH memory.

Connecting to the board

You now can flash the firmware, run and debug the code from within gdb (an arm version of gdb!). To connect to the openocd gdb server (assuming that firmware.elf is the binary file to be flashed and\or debugged):

   $ arm-none-eabi-gdb filename.elf
   (gdb) target extended-remote localhost:3333

Now that gdb is connected, typing the following commands will erase the FLASH memory, load the new firmware, and - finally - run the firmware!

   (gdb) monitor reset halt
   (gdb) monitor flash probe 0
   (gdb) monitor stm32f2x mass_erase 0
   (gdb) load
   (gdb) monitor reset halt
   (gdb) continue