being 1.0.2

Prerequisites

Being can be installed via the setup.py

python setup.py install

or via PyPi (check latest version).

pip install being

Development enviroment can be set up with

python setup.py develop

Running the tests with

python3 setup.py test

Platform and Supported Hardware

Being has mainly be developed on macOS and Linux (Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS). Although untested on Windows it should be possible to be run on there as well. Let us know if you encounter any problems.

Currently supported motor hardware modules are the Linear Motion Module. We will integrate more motors from different vendors in the near future.

Block Network

Being provides various blocks which can be connected with each other (e.g. Motor, Sensor, Network blocks). There are two types of connections: value and message based. The former type provides a continuous stream of date while the latter discrete messages. Payload can be any kind of Python object.

The connections have a connect() method which can be used for making connections. Note that the | operator has been overloaded to make it possible to chain multiple blocks in series.

# Pipe operator
a | b | c

# Is equivalanet to:
# >>> a.output.connect(b.input)
# ... b.output.connect(c.input)

Once a block network is defined it can be run with the awake(*blocks) function. This will continuously execute the block network and start up the web server for the web user interface.

Example Being

A small example being, based on the one from the ÉCAL workshop (without sensor input which is only available on the Raspberry PI).

#!/usr/local/python3
from being.behavior import Behavior
from being.being import awake
from being.motion_player import MotionPlayer
from being.motors import Motor
from being.resources import manage_resources


with manage_resources():
    mot0 = Motor(nodeId=1, length=0.100)
    mot1 = Motor(nodeId=2, length=0.100)
    behavior = Behavior.from_config('behavior.json')
    mp = MotionPlayer(ndim=2)
    behavior.associate(mp)
    mp.positionOutputs[0].connect(mot0.input)
    mp.positionOutputs[1].connect(mot1.input)
    awake(behavior)

A Behavior block tells a MotionPlayer which motions to play. Motions are multi dimensional splines which will be stored in a content directory next to the program. The MotionPlayer blocks samples the currently playing spline and outputs the values to two Motor blocks (CAN IDs 1 and 2). This will also startup a web UI which can be accessed under localhost:8080.

Further Being Programs

Please have a look at these other example programs:

• ecal_being.py: Being program for the ÉCAL workshop.

• run_dummy_being.py: Standalone being with two virtual dummy motors for development and testing purposes.