What exactly is BaseStation?

[leotrj]

I need the answer to write my Meng Project Report. Thanks!!

[jimmychen623]

That's a great question @leotrj . It's a question I've been wondering about lately as well.

[chynu]

it's what u want it to be
if u believe in it

[anmolkabra]

@TrevorEdwards liked to call it "a base station", indicating that it was a base for managing all minibots and handling communication between all elements of the project. I like to call it "the basestation" to refer to a codebase that is the only such element in the project. The basestation is core to the project and I believed it to be pivotal to the project. However, most stakeholders and team leads now prefer the basestation to be peripheral to the project. I like this idea as the user could interact with minibots without a computer or a device, but I'm afraid that making minibots independent will limit their functionality and features (swarm, data collection).

This is my understanding, more like my belief.

[TrevorEdwards]

@anmolkabra is right. Also keep in mind the base station is meant to be run on a bigger computer that is close to your actual bots. This is great when you need to do something complicated that might require a fast processor or GPU, but it is not really necessary for many applications. Even Swarmbot could be created in a peer-to-peer fashion, but it is a lot harder to develop algorithms for this.

For something like MiniBot, it is more important to be able to interact with the bots easily. If the interface to the bot is done with good modularization and you use RPCs, it should not be too difficult to support both simple use cases and complex ones like Swarm. The communication over raw TCP that we did was a mistake :)

[chynu]

The impression I had of the base station was that it is like an empty base unit to which we attach other modules that add functionality, some of which could be a web GUI, multiple minibots, a vision system, etc. but in the end none should be too dependent on the other(s). Kind of like a software kit where you have a base station and some number of things you can attach to it to make it work. Sometimes just the GUI (to play with the simulator), sometimes just a minibot (to send XBOX controls), sometimes just the vision system (????? maybe not just the vision system actually).

Ideally each module would be completely decoupled which isn't the case currently. The web gui doesn't connect to the base station when it starts -- they're kind of the same thing right now (?), so I suppose there's a bit of a disconnect between what it Should Be (? as far as my impression of the base station) and what it Really Is.

[leotrj]

I'm glad to see that my dumb question was able to promote a much needed discussion on the nature of the system that is the heart of Minibot!