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Help and Support => Archives => wattOS R7.5 and 7.0 => Topic started by: nplotnick on March 12, 2015, 01:58:44 PM

Title: Finch Robot and USB
Post by: nplotnick on March 12, 2015, 01:58:44 PM

I have been trying to use a Finch robot (Birdbrain technologies) with Python. The robot connects to the computer via USB.

Both on a desktop and laptop running WattOS 7.5 or WattOS 8, the Python program reports that it cannot connect to the robot. I know that the USB ports are fine since I can use memory sticks and other devices. The robot works perfectly fine on a system running Xubuntu with the same libraries.

Thanks!

Title: Re: Finch Robot and USB
Post by: biffster on March 13, 2015, 12:56:46 AM

Hi there...I am on the road so I wont be able to look at this further until the weekend as I am currently running the still unreleased wattOS R9 which is likely not the same :) , but found a video on the finch and ubuntu 12.04 (which wattOS 7.5 is 13.04 and 8 is Debian) but might be worth a look. Looks like his issue was around users rights and plugdev group, and the creation of a udev file.

Not sure if its a direct match, but might be work a watch (even though he is running Unity for his desktop :)

https://youtu.be/GGIR1DrmIr8
 (https://youtu.be/GGIR1DrmIr8)

Title: Re: Finch Robot and USB
Post by: nplotnick on March 14, 2015, 08:01:12 PM

If I enter SUDO PYTHON programname.py it executes fine. The issue seems to be a permission limitation on using the USB.

I think that there is a way to set SUDO level access to a particular program and not have to give my students overall access as root.

The project I am working on has me teaching them Python programming to interact with robots. I will be allowing them to use memory sticks with WattOS to boot the computers to bypass the Windows hard drives.