Thinking to start using ROS....?

@electricray1981

Posted by: @electricray1981

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So during my adventure building a robot I keep seeing everywhere that ROS is a good way to go. I actually don't know therefore this post. Anybody has some experiences with it? Is it worth the time to dive into ROS? I'm still trying to learn more C++ so would it be helpfull using ROS or would I make my life even more complicated and should I wait a bit before jumping to ROS.

It seems like good stuff as far I could see. I have also a virtual machine here with Ubuntu but not much experience with Ubuntu to be honest.

I would appreciate some advise/opinions.

Sorry, I dont know much about ROS but just had to comment on your avatar! Euler rocks!!!

Ron B

@ronbentley1 

Posted by: @ronbentley1

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Sorry, I dont know much about ROS but just had to comment on your avatar! Euler rocks!!!

 I love this equation it is IMHO one of the most beautifull equations that exists. It has all important operators and numbers we use in math. Pi, I, e, addition, Equality, Exponents and it all comes back to the magic number 0...wonderfull isn't

PS I see now that the avatar has changed and I don't know why. It was with blue numbers now some with woodish background

Weird I wanted the one with the blueish font

@electricray1981 I see blue.

@zander 

Weird I see as the screenshot shows. And I did not drink any toxic substances or smoke Dutch sigarettes 🤣 

@electricray1981 Here is a photo of my Mac screen with my iPhone.

@electricray1981 

Ah  yes, it's a beautiful equation, it was first discovered by Euler in the 18th century and is at the heart of many streams of maths and other sciences. I still marvel at even after many,  many years.

Btw I also see your avatar with blue text, cool!

Ron B

Great everybody see's the correct avatar.

Posted by: @ronbentley1

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Ah  yes, it's a beautiful equation, it was first discovered by Euler in the 18th century and is at the heart of many streams of maths and other sciences. I still marvel at even after many,  many years.

I've read the biography of Euler's life he was trully a wonderfull mind and has done wonderfull things for math. And if I'm not mistaking he was tought by the Bernoulli family (also great minds in math and physics).

But we're getting way off topic here....LOL.

I think I will purchase a newbie/rookie ROS course to see what it brings and if it is something I would like and be able to use. I found some interssting courses on Udemy.

@electricray198

As you mentioned ROS I remembered I had noted a youtube video called 'learn ROS with me' a month or so back.  I've not watched it so I dont know if its any good, and I guess you will find a whole bunch more if you search, but I give a link in case its of interest.

@electricray1981 

Although I spent a bit of time reading about ROS I just couldn't get my head around it. ROS has a steep learning curve particularly for someone without a professional background in software. However it is apparently worth it to a large number of professional robot developers, other wise why would they use it? For my hobby robot project I see no value at all in ROS except to make writing software more complicated for me then it is now.

If you find ROS worth it then perhaps you could post your experiences in this forum.  I was originally attracted to the forum to follow Bill's construction of a "real robot" but that went no where and I wonder if the software side was the problem.

@byron and @robotbuilder

Thanks for your replies. At the moment im working on a prject but I see it won't get perfect this is mainly due to my lack of programming skills ( i have to be honest about that) but also due to the hardware I use. 
So (like I am...I always want to make things better) I started to investigate further and found ROS. What I really would like is to make a awesome robot this is something I wont get done in 1 year or even 2 years because it takes quite some knowledge about many things.
But I thought reading the basics of ROS it is a pretty good platform to use to create a good bot, noted if one knows how to use it. But one doesnt have to invent the "wheel " again the libraries seem to me pretty advanced and using the proper harware one could create a good working bot. But that is just my first opinion seeing how it works. Thats why this topic

Ok well it has been a while I participated t the forum my appologies for that. I had lots of work but also I really wanted to investigate a bit more about ROS and the way I should continue with my hobby adventure.

Well I think If youhave a package woring in ROS al you need to know is C++ or Python (not that I know everything about that) and your able to make efficient communication between so called nodes. This will result is lots of small scripts or source files which makes the bot react as you want. I dont think the code would be more complicated IMHO it would make it more comprehansible because for each task you create some code, a short script.

I'm trying to follow some ROS tutorials at the moment and I agree it is not easy to start with it (so as far I know the learning curve is NOT steep) it takes a while before you grasp the basics. But I think once you get them many doors are open.

This is just my 2 cents. And I'm not done I will continue with ROS cause I think (and thats an opinion) it looks like a great platform to use building robots. It is just getting used to it. 

Any opinions or experiences with ROS I'd like to hear what others think about ROS?

@electricray1981 

When this forum was first setup and Bill was working on a "real" robot there was some interest in ROS.
https://forum.dronebotworkshop.com/ros/two-wheeled-robot-project-using-ros/#post-951
From what I have read you need to be proficient in C++ or Python before you can think about using ROS.