A RAML-described, node-based RESTful API for the Robotis DARWIN-MINI robot
It uses RAML, node.js, the Express framework, and Osprey to describe and implement the API.
It also uses the excellent node bluetooth library.
The flow is simple: start the server, which then listens for HTTP requests, and issues the appropriate binary commands over bluetooth to the robot.
Only tested on a Mac running the Mavericks version of OSX.
npm install
You must also have paired your DARWIN-MINI with your Mac via bluetooth.
Since the API is running on your desktop, you might want to expose it on the
internet, to make it easier to use tools like the API Notebook.
The easiest way I've found is ngrok. Simply download and unzip
to somewhere on your filesystem, choose some random subdomain you'd like to use
for your API (say robo123), then run:
./ngrok -subdomain robo123 3000
Change the value of baseUri in the src/assets/raml/api.raml file to be
http://robo123.ngrok.com/api and now that's the internet entrypoint to your API!
I've signed up and paid a bit to ngrok to reserve my own domain; you might choose to do the same so your RAML file doesn't have to change often.
To start the server, simply type
grunt
or alternatively
node src/app.js
Your API is available at http://localhost:3000/api and an API console is available at http://localhost:3000/api/console . The API definition in RAML is available at http://localhost:3000/api/api.raml -- see http://raml.org for more information.
You can now issue individual commands to your robot using the API Console or any other tool such as the API Notebook, or even just curl from the commandline:
curl http://localhost:3000/api/robots
[
{
"name": "ROBOTIS BT-210",
"address": "b8-63-bc-00-12-16",
"services": [
{
"channel": 1,
"name": "SPP Dev"
}
],
"robotId": "1216"
}
]
Choose the robotId for the robot you'd like to control, and then issue commands to it:
curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{ "name": "Sit" }' http://localhost:3000/api/robots/1216/commands
Note that you must pair with the robot(s) but you need not connect with them; this server will connect for you. So the first command you issue may take a bit longer, while establishing the connection, but subsequent ones will reuse the connection if it's still open. Occasionally, you might need to restart the server if it thinks it's still connected to the robots but they think otherwise.
The API commands are designed to return, by default, only once the robot has finished executing the command, which they accomplish by calculating how much time is allotted for the command in the motion file. So if you want to string multiple commands together, make sure you wait for each response to return before issuing the subsequent request.
The API for reading state data (e.g. whether the robot is moving) isn't finished yet and doesn't work.
Some aspects are still a bit mysterious to me, so I'm guessing a bit in calculating how long commands should take, or simply assuming (because I've been told by someone at Robotis) that the Dynamixel ID should be 200 (decimal) and that the code for executing a motion is 66 (decimal).
Rather than reading the robot's current motion file, somehow, I'm assuming it has the same motion file as the one it comes with out of the box, specifically http://support.robotis.com/en/baggage_files/darwinmini/darwin_mini_exemple_en.zip, which I've bundled with this repo, and which I read when the server starts up to calculate motions, timings, etc.