Specifications and Controls
activities this way, although motion is impractical because of the monitor, mouse, and
keyboard tethers. You may remove these while the system is active at your own risk.
Rather, we suggest that you run the
QuickStart
activities from an offboard computer first
(onboard PC off), and then tackle the networking issues to establish a remote, preferably
wireless connection with your robot.
Radio Ethernet and PC Networking
The RJ-15 connector on the Computer Control Panel provides wired 10/100Base-T
Ethernet networking directly with the onboard PC. With the Performance PeopleBot, we
also install a PCMCIA adaptor card on the PC’s accessory stack and insert a Lucent
Orinico 10GHz 11Mbps (802.11b) wireless Ethernet card in one of its slots. The wireless
Ethernet antenna sits atop the top deck.
To complete the wireless installation, you will need to provide an Access Point module
(comes as an accessory with most units). Attach the Access Point to one of your LAN
hubs or switches with a standard CAT5 100Base-T cable, insert a PCMCIA Orinoco card
into slot 1, and power the accessory. No configuration required. We use the default
operating mode: “managed” client-server.
We ship integrated PC systems’ preset and tested at a fixed IP address with class-C
network configuration. We allocate the same IP to both the wired and wireless Ethernet
ports, typically 192.168.100.32. Although you need not fuss with drivers or low-level
device settings, before you may establish a network connection with the onboard PC
(not the robot’s microcontroller!), even if just through a cross-over Ethernet cable to
another PC’s Ethernet connector, you’ll need to reconfigure the robot’s PC network
settings. Please consult with your network systems administrator for networking details.
Briefly, with Windows, go to the Control Panel’s
Network and Dialup Connections
wizard and choose the networking device’s
Properties
to change the IP address and
other details. Under Linux, there are similar, GUI-based tools under X-Windows to help
you set up the network, such as
netcfg
, but we prefer to edit (
emacs
or
vi
) the salient
network settings in
/etc/sysconfig/network
and in the specific device configuration
files found in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
, such as
ifcfg-eth0
(wired
Ethernet) and
ifcfg-eth1
or
ifcfg-wvlan0
(wireless).
From Windows, use the
Network and Dialup Connections
tool to enable or disable a
particular device. From Linux, use
ifup
and
ifdown
to enable or disable an Ethernet
device. For example, as superuser, type
‘ifdown eth0; ifup eth1’
to switch from a
tethered to a wireless Ethernet connection.
For remote connections over Ethernet to your onboard PC, simply use
telnet
or the more
secure
ssh
with your Linux system. Allow X-windows server connections at your remote PC
(
xhost +[hostname or IP]
) if you plan to export the X-Windows display from the robot
PC for remote GUI-based controls (
export DISPLAY=remote’s hostname or IP:0
, for
example).
With Windows, you will need a special remote-control application to establish a GUI-
based connection from a remote computer to the onboard PC over the network;
VNCserver
, for example, or
XWin32
.
Please note that you may
not
connect with the robot’s microcontroller directly over the
network: That is, you cannot run a client application, such as the ARIA demo or Saphira,
on the remote PC and choose to directly connect with the robot server by selecting the
robot PC’s IP address. Rather, either run the client application on the onboard PC and
export the display and controls over the network to the remote PC (preferred), or use the
20