Author: Ishaan Sayal

TidalView

Whilst TidalView only requires Flutter in order to build and write code, it will be very hard to test your changes against TidalCore data without having TidalCore installed. Therefore, it is highly recommended to have TidalCore installed and configured with the prior instructions.

While these steps are designed to be mostly OS agnostic and Flutter supports all the major OS and distributions, you may have to adjust the instructions for the specific OS and configuration you are using.

Step 1: Installing Flutter

To install Flutter, follow the documentation on their website. We recommend installing VSCode and using the VSCode extension.

Step 2: Install Android Studio

To install Android Studio, it is recommended to use Jetbrains Toolbox, which can be installed on any platform. Once installed, you can download and install Android Studio using the app, and set it up. extension Once installed, open Settings -> Plugins -> Marketplace, and install the Flutter plugin, and restart your IDE.

Step 3: Cloning TidalView

In your terminal, clone TidalView into a directory of your choice:

bash

git clone https://github.com/Stevens-Electric-Boatworks/waterboard
cd waterboard

Then, download all the required dependencies:

bash

flutter pub get

At this point, you should be able to build the application for your platform:

bash

flutter build [PLATFORM=windows,linux,macos,web]

Example

bash

flutter build windows

You can now open the project directory in Android Studio, and you should be build and test for the different platforms.

Step 4: ROSBridge Setup

While optional, this step is highly recommended so you can test your code with data from TidalCore/ROS2. To install ROSBridge, enter your sourced environment (whether this be via a container, WSL2, etc.), and run:

bash

sudo apt-get install -y ros-kilted-rosbridge-server

Then, to pick up the new package, run:

bash

source /opt/ros/kilted/setup.bash

Then, enter the TidalCore ROS2 environment by running:

bash

cd ~/eboat_src/ros_ws/ && source install/setup.bash

or, if you set it up following the optional instructions:

Terminal

ros

You will now be able to run ROSBridge by running the command:

bash

ros2 launch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket_launch.xml

Tip

The ROSBridge command is quite tedious to type out. Therefore, it is recommended to add an alias for this command. You can do this by adding the following line to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file

~/.bashrc

alias rosbridge="ros2 launch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket_launch.xml"

In TidalView settings, you can now set the IP to locahost and the port to 8080, and it should automatically connect to ROSBridge.