LAN mode

This guide covers operation of Stringman in a LAN-only mode (the default)

If stringman-headless is run without the --prod arugment, It will not transmit anything outside of your local network. It hosts the interface locally at http://127.0.0.1:8090

Run motion controller in lan mode

Set up virtualenv

python3 -m virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install "nf_robot[host]"

Run

stringman-headless

the calibration will be saved at a default location of configuration.json

Connect from the UI

When the controller runs, it will print

===================================================
===== To control visit http://127.0.0.1:8090/ =====
===================================================

Open the page and you will see a that the local controller is connected. The components may not be connected yet unless you've already turned them on.

They are discovered on the local network with MDNS when a new config is minted and thereafter conencted to directly.

Running the controller and UI on different machines

Run stringman-headless with --bind_address=0.0.0.0 to host the UI on all interfaces. On another machine you can then connect to it with the correct local address and port 8090

Privacy

The video flow from your robot components (anchors and gripper) in LAN mode is as follows.

When idle the cameras are inactive. When stringman-headless connects to the components, the cameras start, and video is streamed within your wifi network to the stringman-headless process where it is used for locating the markers and performing target identifaction then immediately discarded. Nothing is sent to the cloud. The only data from the video that remains after processing is the location of the robot's marker box, and the locations of any objects which it identified for pick up.

Some images are saved on disk, including images used for posioning during self park, and images of the floor view saved after manually selecting targets.

In the cloud mode, which is activated by running stringman-headless --prod, the video is sent to a relay server at neufangled.com, where it is passed directly to the UI, only when you're connected. Only you have authorization to view that video and control your robot. Neufangled Robotics does not save your video on it's servers.

In either mode, video and robot control are secure and only accessible by you.