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How to develop without the embedded computer

This section covers development on your laptop or desktop. This approach passes flags to the cockpit process which replace actualy interfaces to the hardware with "mock" interfaces that act like the underlying hardware.

Prerequisites:

  • You have done a git clone of the openrov-cockpit repository
  • Are NOT running as root (that requires additional flags when doing the install)
  • You are not running on ARM (there were some intel only development dependencies that will break the default install)
  • If using the mock video options, FFMPEG needs to be installed on your machine.

Step 1: Installation You need to install all of the dependencies that are needed. You do need an active internet connection when running this command.

Linuxs/OSX:

npm run deploy:prod

Windows:

set NODE_ENV=production
set npm_config_shrinkwrap=true
npm install

If you want to install the development dependencies for the system you have to ignore the shrinkwrap settings:

Linuxs /OSX:

npm run deploy:dev

Windows:

set NODE_ENV=development
set npm_config_shrinkwrap=false
npm install

This will go through all of the directories and look for bower.json files and package.json files and install them. It will take a few minutes to run. The goemux project will show some error messages when installing on Intel hardware. Those can be ignored as the project is setup as an optional dependency and will just keep going. The install should exit cleanly:

  │   ├── [email protected]
  │   └── [email protected]
  ├─┬ [email protected]
  │ ├── [email protected]
  │ └─┬ [email protected]
  │   └── [email protected]
  └── [email protected]

npm WARN [email protected] No license field.
[brian@Babs openrov-cockpit]$

The node process expects certain environment flags to be set to change its behavior. You can override all of the settings that are stored in the config files from the command-line.

Windows users: You have to setup the environment variables manually before executing the node command

The minimal items that need to be specified to run in a mock mode are:

  • USE_MOCK=true : Cockpit will load mock dependencies in place of the real ones (which also generate fake runtime events)
  • HARDWARE_MOCK=true : Cockpit will load a mock MCU interface, simulating the firmware.
  • configfile='<path'> : The location to read/write the rovconfig.json file. Your account needs access to this location.
  • pluginsDownloadDirectory='/tmp/plugins' : Folder that will be created if missing, for downloading plugins
USE_MOCK=true HARDWARE_MOCK=true configfile='/tmp/rovconfig.json' pluginsDownloadDirectory='/tmp/plugins' node src/cockpit.js

The minimal command line will start the node process, allowing you to connect to http://localhost:8080 which will bring up the cockpit. The mock dependencies will be sending fake data over the message bus causing compass dials to rotate etc. The minimal command line will not start any video.

Some of the more common advanced command line options:

  • MOCK_VIDEO_TYPE=MJPEG or MOCK_VIDEO_TYPE=GEOMUX (Chooses which video service to use in mock mode)
  • MOCK_VIDEO_HARDWARE=true (Makes the video service generate mock data, rather than use real hardware)
  • env plugins__ui-manager__selectedUI='classic-ui': Override the default theme that is loaded (the env command on linux is needed since the theme name contains a dash.
USE_MOCK=true DEV_MODE=true HARDWARE_MOCK=true MOCK_VIDEO_TYPE=GEOMUX MOCK_VIDEO_HARDWARE=true configfile='/tmp/rovconfig.json' pluginsDownloadDirectory='/tmp/plugins' env plugins__ui-manager__selectedUI='classic-ui'  node src/cockpit.js

Debugging the node processes

There are lots of tools for developing and debugging. We include Cloud9 IDE on the ROV image that we distribute. When developing locally pick your tool of choice.

Using node inspector

This NPM package will allow you to start a web server from the command-line that will allow debugging of a node process using a webkit based browser (Chrome, Firefox etc..).

To install:

npm install -g node-inspector

To start node inspector:

node-inspector --web-port 3080

We need to specify a web-port option because node-inspector by default tries to listen for brower requests on port 8080 which happens to be what we use for cockpit.

You then start the cockpit node process with the debug option (or --debug-brk if you want your process to pause until you connect your debugging session):

USE_MOCK=true DEV_MODE=true configfile='/tmp/rovconfig.json' pluginsDownloadDirectory='/tmp/plugins' node src/cockpit.js --debug

You should now be able to open a browser window to http://localhost:3080 and get a debugging session. And then open another browser window to http://localhost:8080 to start interacting with cockpit.

Using node inspector with forever

You can setup your debug session so that when you make code changes, the system magically and near instantly restarts and reloads cockpit in the background.

You need to install forever

npm install -g forever

And you then change your command that start cockpit to let the forever program load it for you:

USE_MOCK=true DEV_MODE=true HARDWARE_MOCK=true configfile='/tmp/rovconfig.json' pluginsDownloadDirectory='/tmp/plugins' forever -w -c 'node --debug' src/cockpit.js
Using Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a fairly decent Cross-Platform IDE that can be used for writing and debugging in a variety of languages, primarily Node.JS. The cockpit project contains a set of default configuration files for debugging in Mock mode. The steps to debug with VSC are:

  1. Install Visual Studio Code for your platform
  2. Open the openrov-cockpit project folder in VSC
  3. Hit F5 to start debugging
  4. The cockpit software can now be accessed as usual from http://localhost:8080
  5. Use VSC to place breakpoints, step through the code, inspect variables, and much more. See VSC docs for features.

Additionally, there are plugins that allow debugging the code running in the browser in VSC as well, which we will provide instructions for in the future.

Other developer tasks:

Bulk upgrade node dependencies:

https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/update

ncu --updateAll

NPM shrinkwrap all of the packages:

Do this when readying the repo for the next release to prevent the dependencies from moving.

npm run shrinkwrap

After you upgrade packages with new dependencies or upgrade those dependencies, the shrinkwrap files should automatically regenerate. Before checking them in to source code be sure to run:

npm run prepshinkwrap

which will remove the "OptionalDepenencies" from the shrinkwrap without regenerating the dependencies.