Access The Terminal

Besides using web control or controller control, we often interact with the robotic arm through the terminal.

Taking the Raspberry Pi version as an example, the RDK X5 runs natively without needing to enter Docker. The host system of DofbotUltra is the Raspberry Pi OS. For better compatibility, we have installed the ROS2 environment in a Docker image, which can be simply understood as a virtual machine system. The base image of this Docker image is Ubuntu 22.04.

Connect to Terminal

Terminal Tool Description

The operating environment is a Windows 11 computer.

The terminal tool we use here is MobaXterm (using the same tool is recommended to avoid many subsequent issues).

The MobaXterm official website is MobaXterm Xserver with SSH, telnet, RDP, VNC and X11 - Home Edition.

You can also find the MobaXterm installation package MobaXterm_Installer_v26.3.zip in our supporting materials.

This file is a compressed archive. After extraction, double-click to install normally.

Get IP Address

You can find the IP address from the DofbotUltra OLED screen.

Here it is 192.168.2.46.

Then open MobaXTerm and follow these steps to connect to the terminal:

Seeing this screen means the connection was successful!

Change Camera Type

When using a depth camera, if the image is overexposed, it may be because ~/.bashrc or docker-compose.yaml is not properly configured.

DofbotUltra supports two camera models: one with a depth camera and the other with a regular USB camera. The system image defaults to the depth camera, i.e., DABAI_DCW2. If you are using the regular camera model, some modifications are needed.

We need to modify the ~/.bashrc file inside Docker:

vim ~/.bashrc

You can also use the nano editor, but nano is not pre-installed in Docker. The usage of editors is not detailed here.

Find this line and change it to export CAMERA_TYPE=USB, then save and exit.

Simple vim editor usage:

1. Press the i key to enter edit mode.

2. Press the ESC key to return to command mode.

3. In command mode:

   1. Type :q! and press Enter to exit without saving.
   2. Type :wq! and press Enter to save and exit.
   3. Note: the colon ":" must also be typed.

Then re-enter the terminal, find 192.168.2.46(pi) on the side, and double-click it (this is the IP address we just saw).

If you see my_camera set to USB, the modification was successful!

If you want to use JupyterLab for programming, you also need to modify the file ~/dofbot_ultra/docker-compose.yaml on the host.

Change CAMERA_TYPE to the corresponding camera name (USB or DABAI_DCW2), then restart the container for the change to take effect in JupyterLab.

To restart, use:

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docker compose down
docker compose up -d --force-recreate

Disable the Auto-Start Web Control Backend Process

For Raspberry Pi:

First, exit the Docker container:

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exit

Navigate to the ~/dofbot_ultra directory:

Modify the docker-compose.yaml file:

Set ENABLE_APP to false:

Save and exit, then run these two commands in the current directory:

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docker compose down
docker compose up -d

After successful execution, open a new terminal and connect to 192.168.2.46(pi).

You will now see that the web control backend process is no longer running.

For RDK Version:

Click "Close all processes" or enter the following command in the terminal to stop the web control backend process:

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sudo systemctl stop dofbot-app.service

After successful execution, open a new terminal and connect to 192.168.2.43.

You will now see that the web control backend process is no longer running.