Installing and Running the Novint Falcon

Introduction

This tutorial describes how to install and run a Novint falcon in an Ubuntu virtual machine. This tutorial goes through how to do it from scratch.

Note: the libnifalcon repository is now forked here. Furthermore, the idealab_ros_tools repository now has the current working copy of the ros_falcon package in it. the original ros_falcon package has been forked and is now here

Instructions

1. Go to the usb settings and add the falcon filter to virtualbox ('Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FALCON HAPTIC [0400]')

2. open up virtualbox and check to see if it is found

   ```bash
   dmesg | grep FALCON
   ```
   

3. install libusb

   ```bash
   sudo apt install -y libusb
   ```
   

4. clone repository

   ```bash
   mkdir ~/drivers
   cd ~/drivers
   git clone https://github.com/idealabasu/libnifalcon
   cd libnifalcon
   ```
   

5. follow instructions

   ```bash
   cd ~/drivers/libnifalcon
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ..
   make
   sudo make install
   ```
   

6. add device udev file from within the idealab_ros_tools repository

   ```
   #the default one doesn't seem to work
   #sudo cp ~/drivers/libnifalcon/linux/40-novint-falcon-udev.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
   sudo cp ~/code/code_idealab_ros/src/ros_falcon/udev_rules/99-udev-novint.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
   sudo chmod 644 /etc/udev/rules.d/99-udev-novint.rules
   sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger
   ```
   

7. run findfalcons several times until you see it

8. add joy package

   ```bash
   sudo apt install -y ros-melodic-joy
   ```
   

9. clone the ros falcon repository (optional, it is now located in the code_idealab_ros repository now)

   ```bash
   cd ~/
   git clone https://github.com/idealabasu/ros_falcon.git
   ```
   

10. copy the folder into the src folder in your workspace (also unnecessary now, it is already there)

11. Run node and view results

    1. in a new terminal:

       ```
       roscore
       ```
       

    2. run falcon node

       ```bash
       roscd ros_falcon
       # cd nodes
       #chmod +x joy2cmd_vel.py
       rosrun ros_falcon driver
       ```
       

    3. in a second terminal:

       ```
       rostopic echo /falconPos
       ```