rsha256/frcsim-tutorial

FRCSim Installation Tutorial with Markdown formatting

Installation Guide: FRCSim w/ Java

Written & Provided by FRC 1923: The MidKnight Inventors                                   

YOU WILL NEED:

• Ubuntu 16.04 or macOS
  • If you’re using Windows, we recommend dual booting your computer (Instructions provided below)
• An internet connection for software downloads
• Recommended: At least an i5 processor and 16GB ram
  • As a general rule, remember that FRCSim is more resource-intensive than Solidworks.

THINGS TO REMEMBER:

• Wait for a step to finish before moving on, as programs may perform unexpected actions.
• Read the instructions completely before running a command.
• Avoid Virtual Machines at all costs! VMs can be bogged down by lag when running high-intensity programs.

• Formatted text (like this line) represents shell commands; run them in a terminal.

---

HOW TO DUAL-BOOT WITH UBUNTU:

• Download Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS here: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Once you have downloaded the .iso file, burn the file to a USB flash drive (> 2GB)

• Create a live USB by writing the .iso to the USB: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows
  • If you have have previously tried to dual-boot a computer or have made recovery partitions, you should delete them. Press the start button, type in partition, open up disk management, delete all extraneous partitions. You should only have Windows C: & EFI System Partition
• Boot up Ubuntu via the live USB: Reboot your computer and hold your interupt key after rebooting, to reach the boot manager menu. Boot from the UEFI USB stick.
• If your system works from the USB, you can load it to your computer via the installer on the desktop.
• Follow the Ubuntu installer instructions; Boot into ubuntu by rebooting your computer, holding the startup interrupt key & choosing Ubuntu.
• Boot your computer into BIOS. Navigate to Startup Options -> Safe Boot and make sure it reads disabled.
• Open up Hard Drive Manager.
  • Option 1: Shrink the partition of Windows on your C: drive (free at least 42 Gb)
  • Option 2: Make sure you have a drive inserted that is completely empty
• Restart your computer and hit the interrupt key to open BIOS.
• Boot from your USB or sd card & begin installer

ONCE UBUNTU IS INSTALLED:

• Tap the windows button (Also referred to as the ‘super key’ on Linux)

• Type in: Ubuntu Software

• Type in: GDebi

  • Install the first one

• Optional - Download Google Chrome (recommended): https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html

Download WPILib (somewhat different on ubuntu) by adding the repository first.

• Open terminal then type:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:wpilib/toolchain

Then you need to add java (warning: you will get a deprecation notice):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

Run the following command - you should see all of the packages that you just installed:

sudo apt-get update

Now, paste the following command as is:

sudo apt-get install \
  git \
  libc6-i386 \
  curl \
  jstest-gtk gradle oracle-java8-installer \
  frc-toolchain meshlab cmake libprotobuf-dev \
  libprotoc-dev protobuf-compiler

Now we will edit the file /etc/environment.

sudo nano /etc/environment

Append a line with the following. This will define a system-wide variable named JAVA_HOME that references the install location of Java on your machine:

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle"

Immediately load the /etc/environment configuration file you just created.

source /etc/environment

List the contents of your Java installation directory using your new $JAVA_HOME variable.

ls $JAVA_HOME

You should see contents like this, which means that your system is properly referencing the Java installation directory we set above.

bin	LICENSE
COPYRIGHT	man
db	README.html
include	release
javafx-src.zip	src.zip
jre	THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME-JAVAFX.txt
lib	THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME.txt

INSTALLING ECLIPSE:

• Install eclipse: https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/oomph/epp/oxygen/R2/eclipse-inst-linux64.tar.gz

• Open the folder in nautilus (files)

• Right click the folder with the .tar.gz extension and click 'extract here'

• Open the eclipse-installer directory; double-click the eclipse-inst installer to being the installation process.

• When prompted, select Eclipse IDE for Java Developers as the flavor of Eclipse that we want.

  • Note that Eclipse will be installed to $HOME/eclipse/java-oxygen by default.

• Follow the prompts to install Eclipse, and launch Eclipse after installation is complete

• When prompted to choose a workspace, use the default value and click OK. The workspace is the directory where Eclipse will save your programming projects, and defaults to $HOME/workspace.

• Check on a couple of configuration options in Eclipse.

On the menu bar, go to: Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Installed JREs

• Make sure the Oracle JDK8 is listed.

Go to: Window -> Preferences -> General -> Workspace

• Check Save automatically before build.

Note that, if you used all the default settings, Eclipse should now be installed at $HOME/eclipse/java-oxygen/eclipse.

INSTALLING FRC ECLIPSE PLUGINS:

• Install CTRE Toolsuite: Since you are not on windows, you MUST use the following link: http://www.ctr-electronics.com//downloads/lib/CTRE_FRCLibs_NON-WINDOWS_v4.4.1.14.zip
• Once installed, extract to your desired location (We recommend $HOME)
• Open Eclipse - we will get back to CTRE Toolsuite later.
• Install the Eclipse FRC plugins. The Eclipse plugins for FRC assist you in building, deploying, and testing Robot projects. Be sure that you do not interrupt this process. It may seem to hang or freeze at times (especially on a slow machine)
  • Help -> Install new software -> Add…
  • Use the following settings.

Name: FRC Plugins

Location: http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/release/eclipse/

• Click Ok

• Expand the WPILib Robot Development repo.

  • Check the box for the Robot Java Development plugin.

• Click Next, and follow the wizard and confirm and agree to the prompts presented to you.

• You may see a message that says "Warning: You are installing software that contains unsigned content." Although this is not ideal, it is safe to click Ok.

• Eclipse will prompt you to restart itself. Let it. Eclipse will install critical files after it restarts.

INSTALLING GAZEBO:

Gazebo (the simulator software) allows you to test your robot code in a (modeled) 3D space.

• Just run the following command in terminal:

curl -ssL http://get.gazebosim.org | sh

INSTALLING FRCSIM:

“With FRCSim, you should be able to finish 90% Of your programming without ever touching a RoboRIO. We want you to be able to test your code BEFORE you put in on your robot, and before the robot is even built. FRCSim allows robot code written in C++ or Java that normally runs on your RoboRIO to be run on your laptop or desktop. It connects to custom robot models in the Gazebo robot simulator.“ [3]

• Use curl to download FRCSim files to your machine.

curl -o \
    $HOME/Downloads/simulation-2017.2.1.zip                                      http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/maven/release/edu/wpi/first/wpilib/simulation/simulation/2017.2.1/simulation-2017.2.1.zip

• Create a directory for various simulation files. Note that Eclipse automatically created $HOME/wpilib when we installed the FRC Plugin. We are now manually creating $HOME/wpilib/simulation.

mkdir $HOME/wpilib/simulation

Unzip our simulation files to the directory we just created.

unzip \
    $HOME/Downloads/simulation-2017.2.1.zip \
    -d $HOME/wpilib/simulation

Create a system-wide symlink to the frcsim (FRC simulator) program.

sudo ln -s $HOME/wpilib/simulation/frcsim /usr/bin/frcsim

Create a system-wide symlink to the sim_ds (simulated driver station) program.

sudo ln -s $HOME/wpilib/simulation/sim_ds /usr/bin/sim_ds

We must manually compile the wpilib simulation plugins for FRCsim in order for the simulator to work properly on Linux.

Navigate to the $HOME/Downloads directory in your terminal.

cd $HOME/Downloads

Use git to download some wpilib code that we must compile on our machine.

git clone https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib

Navigate to the allwpilib code that we just downloaded.

cd $HOME/Downloads/allwpilib

Check out a specific version of the code we just downloaded.

git checkout v2017.3.1

Run the gradlew script. That script will use gradle, a software build tool, to compile the software we just downloaded. This script takes a while to run. Though, occasionally, I see this script freeze and hang. If that happens, it is safe to kill this and re-run it.

./gradlew build -PmakeSim

Copy the plugins we just compiled into our simulation plugins directory.

cp ./build/install/simulation/plugins/* \
    $HOME/wpilib/simulation/plugins/

Install model and world files 2018 simulation files have not yet been released (and the 2017 files were never shared either) but we can install the 2016 simulation worlds and models to give us something to work off. Download some 3D models for our simulation.

curl -o \
    $HOME/Downloads/models.zip \    https://usfirst.collab.net/sf/frs/do/downloadFile/projects.wpilib/frs.simulation.frcsim_gazebo_models/frs1160?dl=1

Unzip the model files into our $HOME/Downloads directory.

unzip $HOME/Downloads/models.zip -d $HOME/Downloads/

Copy the downloaded gazebo simulation models into our simulation directory.

cp -r $HOME/Downloads/frcsim-gazebo-models-4/models \
    $HOME/wpilib/simulation/

Copy the downloaded gazebo simulation worlds into our simulation directory.

cp -r $HOME/Downloads/frcsim-gazebo-models-4/worlds \
    $HOME/wpilib/simulation/

Download the official 2016 game arena world file to our simulation directory.

curl -o $HOME/wpilib/simulation/worlds/frc2016.world \
    "http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/release/simulation/downloads/frc2016.world"

Create a sample application In eclipse: Eclipse -> New -> Other -> Example Robot Java Project -> GearsBot -> Finish. Run

1. FRCSim/Gazebo You only need to do this step once: Fire up frcsim (Gazebo) using the terminal.

frcsim

Wait until Gazebo has finished loading. Once Gazebo loads, insert the sample GearsBot robot provided by FRC. Gazebo -> Insert -> Models -> GearsBot Click somewhere in the world to place your model. Close everything open right now

Running Auton You only need to do this step once: install the 2016 field

curl -o $HOME/wpilib/simulation/worlds/frc2016.world \
    "http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/release/simulation/downloads/frc2016.world"

First open eclipse and run a eclipse 2016 prgm as a simulated robot deployment then type:

frcsim $HOME/wpilib/simulation/worlds/frc2016.world

then place the robot in the field then type in:

sim_ds

then click auton Then click enable You auton code should be simulated

Troubleshooting:

• If robot isn’t moving:

  1. Just put allwpilib in $HOME/downloads and the simulation folder in $HOME/wpilib/simulation Download links: allwpilib Simulation
  2. Then move the libgz_msgs from the build in allwpilib to plugins in your wpilib/simulations folder

• [Err] [Master.cc:96] EXCEPTION: Unable to start server[bind: Address already in use]

There is probably another Gazebo process running (even if you cannot see it open in a window), so you just need to restart your computer

• If eclipse isn’t working A multidude of things could be wrong here, and we found that you can use ant to completely replace eclipse:

cd /directory/of/repository
ant jar

Sources:

• Installing Ubuntu: [1] [2]
• Setting up FRCSim and dependencies: [3]
• Running FRCSim: [4]