IOP Node Manager

Summary

The communication between the IOP components occurs via a Node Manager. The Node Manager performs like a router, detects local and remote components and routes the messages to the right destination. In an IOP system one Node Manager should run on each host.

This Node Manager is written in Python and can be used as ROS package or as standalone component as well. It is a part of the ROS/IOP Bridge.

Design

This version of Node Manager is compatible to the JuniorRTE of the JrMiddleware and can be used as an alternative.

In the current version the routing was improved by extended priority handling and use of multiple threads to handle receive, send and queue tasks.

The local communication uses Unix Domain Socket (UDS). Node Manager listen on /tmp/JuniorRTE for incoming connection and all other messages. For received messages each component creates it's own socket with integer value of their JAUS id (subsystem.node.component), e.g. /tmp/6619407 for 101.1.15.

For remote communication UDP is used. The remote components are discovered on receiving a message with new source address. On routing to unknown destination the message will be send to multicast group with ACK requested. These messages are send with reduced rate. It is also possible to create an address book in configuration file if discovering is not possible.

The default configuration is located in ~/.config/iop.fkie/iop_node_manager.yaml and is stored in YAML format. If configuration file does not exists a new with default values will be created on next start of Node Manager.

The Node Manager provides also an interface to change logging and statistics at runtime. On enabled statistics all handled messages are written to a file (by default ~/.iop/statistics/last.msgs). There are also scripts to parse and analyze the statistics at runtime. They show current load or connection state of components.

Install

Clone this repository to your preferred destination.

• If you use it with ROS put this repository into ROS workspace and call
  catkin build

• Without ROS support you can use setup.py to install the code:

  cd iop_node_manager/fkie_iop_node_manager
  python setup.py install --user --record installed_files.txt

  The executables are now located in ~/.local/bin.

  Note: to remove installed files call

  xargs rm -rf < installed_files.txt

Run

Use rosiopnodemanager.py to launch Node Manager as a ROS-Node:

rosrun fkie_iop_node_manager rosiopnodemanager.py

Or you use iopnodemanager.py to start Node Manager as standalone script:

~/.local/bin/iopnodemanager.py

iopparam.py

Using this script you can change parameter during the runtime, e.g. change log level or enable/disable statistics output.

rosrun fkie_iop_node_manager iopparam.py --loglevel debug

or

rosrun fkie_iop_node_manager iopparam.py --statistic true

iopeval.py

Analyse the output located in ~/.iop/statistics/last.msgs and create statistics specified by parameter.

rosrun fkie_iop_node_manager iopeval.py connections ~/.iop/statistics/last.msgs

Statistics output in Node Manager should be enabled!

Notice

Currently communication over TCP is experimental and Serial is under development.