[Playerstage-developers] hard to drive a robot from clients running on new systems

[Paul O. <new...@ki...>]

Hello developers,

I have problem of very strange nature: it is almost impossible to drive a 
robot from newly bought PCs running latest versions of Linux distros 
(Fedora 8, Fedora 9, Gentoo 2008.0).
Some facts:
1. I'd been driving roomba robots from quite old machine Xeon 3.2 HT 1GB 
RAM, running Fedora Core 3. I'd been using playerv as a client, also I'd 
been using server to server communication by using player server with 
linuxjoystick driver configured in order to drive a robot with a joystick. 
I'd been using Player 2.2 from svn trunk on both roomba embedded computer 
(Foxboard with ETRAX CPU) and host PC. Everything was fine.
2. later I've installed Player 2.2 from svn trunk on my Laptop (Core 2 Duo 
2.0GHz, 1GB RAM, Fedora 8), for the first time I experienced problems 
with playerv, however linuxjoystick driver was able to drive remote 
roomba robot properly.
3. recently I've installed Player 2.2 from svn trunk on new Desktop PC 
(Core 2 Extreme 3.0GHz, 8 GB RAM, Gentoo 2008.0), I'm experiencing the 
same problems with playerv as on my Laptop. And I'm experiencing problems 
with linuxjoystick driver, it can't drive roomba robot properly! (I've 
checked twice if /dev/input/js0 is usable, and it's fine).

It seems like velocity steering commands sent to remote robot gets missing 
somewhere on the way. Also, playerv and player with linuxjoystkick seem to 
be dead after a while, so only killall -9 helps to stop it (they both 
don't respond to ctrl-c). Strangely, there's no problem with reading from 
remote robot:
- bumper readings
- battery power
- odometry position
- stall status
- ir readings
- camera image from USB camera connected to foxboard on roomba (however 
I'm not using it while I'm driving a robot, I don't want to consume whole 
the bandwidth)
It seems like requests are also processed properly, as playerv is 
always able to query roomba about position2d or bumper geometry. The 
problem is with sending commands! Sometimes it happend that one velocity 
command (for example go back with certain speed) breaks through and robot 
start to move backward, but other commands are missing, playerv is 
completly dead and soon roomba hits the wall (no bumpers on roomba back!) 
and soon roomba starts, as we say it here "burn the rubber". What's going 
wrong with the Player communication?!

Cheers,
Paul