Daughterboard

Build instructions

sudo apt install \
  cmake ninja-build git build-essential pkg-config qt4-default python3-pip \
  libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libavutil-dev libjpeg-dev
pip install conan
mkdir -p build/Release
(cd build/Release && conan install ../.. --build=missing)
cmake -B build/Release -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -GNinja \
  -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON -DCMAKE_CXX_CLANG_TIDY=/usr/bin/clang-tidy-14
ninja -C build/Release

Using a virtualenv, CC=clang-14, CXX=clang++-14 are recommended. conan should use the same compiler for dependencies as the main build. direnv can be used to automate loading the virtualenv and setting the compiler options.

Run the Blaster controller

The main program is kamikaze; run with all features enabled:

ninja -C build kamikaze &&
build/kamikaze --logtostderr \
  --spi /dev/spidev0.0 \
  --save_directory=$(pwd)/output

--spi enables talking to the slave over SPI, which will only work on a Raspberry Pi connected to the daughterboard with a flashed Atmega328p (see the arduino/ folder). If using the prototype that communicates over USB Serial, pass --arduinoio_tty=/dev/ttyACM0 (or ACM1 etc) instead of --spi.

On a dev machine leave off both --spi and --arduinoio_tty to stub out all daughterboard communication.

CLI for controlling the hardware

Test the Arduino communication code with robot_test:

ninja -C build robot_test && build/robot_test

The uploader binary

The uploader binary lives in uploader/. It monitors the shots directory, or any directory that is passed to it, and uploads any files that it finds that meet the specification. To run it, first install the requirements in uploader/requirements.txt:

$ sudo pip install -r uploader/requirements.txt

Next, obtain a copy of aws_credentials.secret, which contains the AWS credentials in the boto3 format. This format is documented on the boto3 site Basically, if you have an aws_access_key_id and an aws_secret_access_key, you can easily create this plain text file for yourself. Otherwise, you can obtain credentials from a teammate.

Finally, run the binary with an environment variable, like a normal python script:

AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE=aws_credentials.secret python uploader/uploader.py --watch_dir=/path/to/shots --upload_db=path/to/uploads.sqlite

The AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE environment variable is consumed by the boto3 AWS integration library and used automatically to connect to S3, where the files are uploaded to. Also note that by default the images are uploaded to the blaster-gallery bucket in the US West (N. California) region.

The --watch_dir flag is the directory that will be monitored for images in the specified format.

The --upload_db flag is the path to the sqlite database file that will be used to track uploads. It's perfectly fine to pass the path to a file that does not exist yet, and it will be created.

See also the repo that handles the display of these images (private): raygun

Install services (optional)

Install the systemd service to auto-start the controller with

sudo systemctl enable $(pwd)/kamikaze-controller.service
./configure_autossh.sh  # Might need some configuration.