Connecting to a Turtlebot

1. Make sure your computer is connected to the same network as the Turtlebot, whether it's NUwave or connected by ethernet over the same local network.

2. Open two new terminals. One will be used for the Turtlebot and one for the host. More will be opened for the Turtlebot to run multiple processes. The host must have some fairly recent distro of ROS in order to connect and run commands properly. The host must also have installed all the ROS Turtlebot software (will be needed to run simulations, can be downloaded here).

3. Run ifconfig on host computer to find your IP address.

4. On the host computer, run export ROS_HOSTNAME=<HOST_PC_IP>, substituting with the IP address found in step 3.

5. Run export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<TURTLEBOT_IP>:11311, substituting with the IP of your Turtlebot. Each Turtlebot's IP will be their name followed by ".neu.edu". So, the IP for a Turtlebot named Squirt, the IP will be squirt.neu.edu.

6. In the second terminal, ssh into the turtlebot by running ssh turtlebot@<TURTLEBOT_IP>.

7. Once inside the Turtlebot, run the following two commands: export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311 export ROS_HOSTNAME=<TURTLEBOT_IP>.

8. To make sure there's a connection, run roslaunch turtlebot_bringup minimal.launch on the Turtlebot terminal. The Turtlebot should beep signifying the startup. Then run rostopic list on the host terminal. A list of rostopics should appear. If not, the devices are not properly connected, most commonly if they are not on the same network or if the Turtlebot's IP was incorrect.