Setting up an Ubuntu machine to connect to the robot’s VPN¶
IPs might be different for your robot. Please ask someone from the STRANDS team.
Connecting via Network-Manager¶
In order to connect a random PC to the robot, it first needs to be able
to connect to the robot via TCP port 1723. The onboard PC (with local IP
192.168.0.100
and remote IP as assigned by the WiFi DHCP server, the
remote IP is referred to as ``WLAN_IP`` from now on) acts as a
gateway.
- Make sure the Network-Manager PPTP plugin is installed:
sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp-gnome
- Create a new VPN connection in Network-Manager using PPTP protocol
- Set ``WLAN_IP`` as the gateway address (ask a member of the STRANDS team to get it)
- set username and password (ask a member of the STRANDS team to get it)
- In the “VPN” tab, choose “Advanced”, and select “Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE)”
- In the “IPv4 Settings” tab, choose “Address Only”
- Click on “Routes” in the “IPv4 Settings” tab, and select “Use this connection only for resources on its own network”
- Still in “Routes” add a static route with
- Address:
192.168.0.0
- Netmask:
24
- Gateway:
0.0.0.0
- save and connect to the new VPN network,… Tadaaa, you should be connected. (Note: This connection is only used to connect to the robot, all other network traffic on your computer still goes via the default route, not the robot!)
configure /etc/hosts
¶
in order to have it all working nicely for ROS to find all machines, you
need to add the robot’s IP addresses in /etc/hosts
on your own
machine like this: The following is an example taken from Linda. Please
ask a member of the team for the correct IP range
192.168.0.100 linda
192.168.0.101 left-cortex
192.168.0.102 right-cortex
192.168.0.230 vpn-00
192.168.0.231 vpn-01
192.168.0.232 vpn-02
192.168.0.233 vpn-03
192.168.0.234 vpn-04
192.168.0.235 vpn-05
192.168.0.236 vpn-06
192.168.0.237 vpn-07
192.168.0.238 vpn-08
192.168.0.239 vpn-09
192.168.0.240 vpn-10
192.168.0.241 vpn-11
192.168.0.242 vpn-12
192.168.0.243 vpn-13
192.168.0.244 vpn-14
192.168.0.245 vpn-15
192.168.0.246 vpn-16
192.168.0.247 vpn-17
192.168.0.248 vpn-18
192.168.0.249 vpn-19
192.168.0.250 vpn-20
192.168.0.251 vpn-21
192.168.0.252 vpn-22
Enjoy¶
You should be all set now. Just run
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<robot_name>:11311/
andexport ROS_HOSTNAME=vpn-XX
to your assign name, withXX
matching your assign IP (see above)
You should be able to e.g. run rosrun rviz rviz
displaying all
data streams.
convenience scripts¶
At UOL we use a little script to set our desktop PCs to use the robot
ROS infrastructure, called
robot-overlord.sh.
Simply download it and run source robot-overlord.sh
. This works for
Linda. Please adjust robot name appropriately if you work on one of the
other robots.
Original page: https://github.com/strands-project/lamor15/wiki/Robot-VPN-to-connect-from-Desktop-PCs-and-Laptops