Introduction

The Petoi Desktop App offers a user-friendly graphical interface for configuring the firmware, calibrating the robot, designing customized motions, and utilizing debugging tools. The major function modules are the Firmware Uploader, Joint Calibrator, Skill Composer, and Tools.

Petoi Desktop App works on both Nybble and Bittle, controlled by NyBoard based on ATmega328P or Bittle X / Bittle X+Arm / Nybble Q controlled by BiBoard based on ESP32.

** Download the latest version of the Petoi Desktop APP. **

For the robot with the NyBoard, before running the app, you must use the included USB adapter or the Bluetooth dongle to connect to a Petoi robot. You may need to install drivers for the USB connection.

For NyBoard, more detailed documentation can be found at NyBoard V1_0, NyBoard V1_1, or NyBoard V1_2 (which is similar to NyBoard V1_1).

For BiBoard, there are BiBoard V0_* (which requires an extension hat to use the extension hat to use voice command module and Grove sockets) and BiBoard V1_0.

Windows

Run the UI.exe in the unzipped folder. Do NOT move the UI.exe to another location in Windows.

Mac

After downloading the Mac version, you must drag it into the Applications folder.

If you see the error message that Petoi Desktop App cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified, you can right-click the icon, hold the Shift key and click Open.

Linux

Please see the next chapter to run the app from a terminal.

Run the app from the Terminal

In the case of compatibility issues, or if you want to modify the source and test, you can also run the code from the Terminal.

The Terminal is a built-in interface on Mac or Linux machines. The equivalent environment on Windows machines is called the Command-Line Tool (CMD). It's recommended that you install Anaconda to manage your Python environment (Python version > 3.7.1). It can also provide the Powershell as a Terminal for older Windows machines.

Depending on your existing Python configuration, you may need to upgrade to Python3 and install the following libraries:

  • pyserial

  • pillow

You can install them by entering pip3 install pyserial pillow in the Terminal or use the package manager in Anaconda.

To run the code:

  1. In the Terminal, use the cd command to navigate to the OpenCat/pyUI/ folder. You can use the Tab key to auto-complete the path name.

  2. After entering the pyUI/ folder, enter ls and ensure you can see the UI.py and other python source codes listed.

  3. Enter python3 UI.py.

For Linux system users, if you encounter the python error message "_tkinter.TclError: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable", you can try to install python3-tk, tk-dev, taking Debian / Ubuntu as an example, the command is as follows:

apt install python3-tk

apt install tk-dev

After the installation is complete, reboot the computer.

Open Source Codes

The source code is written in Tkinter using Python 3 and is open-source. The GitHub repository URL is: https://github.com/PetoiCamp/OpenCat/tree/main/pyUI

UI.py is the general entry for all the modules:

  • UI.py

-> FirmwareUploader.py

-> Calibrator.py

-> SkillComposer.py

-> Debugger.py

-> translate.py provides multi-language support for the UI. You may help to translate the UI into your language.

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