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tm129-robotics2020

Repo to explore the drafting of updated robotics activities for the OU module TM129.

Binder

Neural net demos: Binder

Presentation: Binder

(I note in passing the nbgitpuller binder tab here, as well as this WIP on packaging py requirements via a py package; should this repo be used as content against a binderbox elsewhere?)

Build process

The ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest container is built from this innovationOUtside/tm129-robotics2020/ repo by a Github Action watching releases.

On my own machine, I then run:

cd release
docker pull ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest
docker build --tag ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current .
docker push ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current

The release/Dockerfile is likely to become a work in progress that does things like tidy up the container. At some point, the housekeeping will then be pushed back into the Github Action; I may also create another Github Action, or extend the original one, to perform the above steps to publish the release container.

A proper tagging strategy and automation route for images creating and publishing images released to students also needs figuring out.

Quick start (presentation testing)

Download and installer docker...

From the command line / Powershell, run:

# update the image
docker pull ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current

Create a directory to share into the container somewhere, eg ~/TM129VCE

Docker dashboard instructions

From the images tab, create a new container (tm351vce), use port: 8129, select the TM129VCE directory you want to to share and mount it onto /home/jovyan/shared inside the container:

Set the container running and follow the running containe's Open in browser dashboard link.

Go to the With the container running instructions...

Mac instructions:

From command line:

Find yourself a working directory. Optionally create a TM129VCE test directory (one will be created if you don’t) Run:

# update the image
docker pull ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current
# clear any old container
docker rm -f tm129vce
# launch new container
docker run -d -p 8129:8888 --name tm129vce -v "$PWD/TM129VCE":/home/jovyan/shared  ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current

Go to the With the container running instructions...

Windows instructions:

Using Powershell, find yourself a working directory.

Optionally create a TM129VCE test directory (one will be created if you don’t)

Run:

# update the image
docker pull ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current
# clear any old container
docker rm -f tm129vce
# launch new container
docker run -d -p 8129:8888 --name tm129vce -v $pwd\TM129VCE:/home/jovyan/shared  ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current

Go to the With the container running instructions...

With the container running:

In a browser, go to localhost:8129

Use the token: letmein

On notebook homepage, click to select the content folder, then in notebook homepage toolbar select Move, and enter /shared in the moved to path.

You should then be able to view the notebooks in shared/content in the notebook UI and the notebooks should also be on host in TM129VCE/content

Note that the nbev3devsim simulator used throughout the notebooks requires you to access the materials via a recent Chrome browser.

HTML version

An HTML version (maybe?!) of the materials in the repo is available here: https://innovationoutside.github.io/tm129-robotics2020/. Note that this site may lag the materials in the repo by few days...

This repository defines the computing environment for the practical activities for the 20J update to the OU TM129 robotics block.

A Docker container image built from the repository using repo2docker is available on Dockerhub: ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020

Release:

docker pull ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest && docker image tag ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current && docker push ousefulcoursecontainers/ou-tm129:current

Getting Started

You can explore the contents of this repository via interactive Jupyter notebooks by clicking the Binder button above.

To run the environment on your own computer, you need to do the following:

  • install Docker onto your computer; you can download the installation files from the Docker website: Get Docker

  • open a terminal / command prompt in your desktop; from the command prompt, do the following:

    • create a working directory / folder to work in by entering the command: mkdir TM129;

    • change directory into that fold by running the command: cd TM129;

    • run the command docker pull ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest to pull down the Docker container image from Docker Hub; (if you have previously downloaded the image, this will downloaded any updated version of it);

    • on a Mac at least, launch the docker container by running the command: docker run --name tm129vce -p 8129:8888 -v "$PWD:/home/jovyan/notebooks" -e JUPYTER_TOKEN="letmein" ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest

      • (the quotes round the volume mount cope with spaces in the $PWD directory path)

    • stop (hibernate) the container with the command: docker stop tm129vce

    • restart the container with the command: docker restart tm129vce

On Windows, use a run command of the form:

docker run --name tm129vce -d -p 8129:8888 -v $pwd\notebooks:/home/jovyan/notebooks -e JUPYTER_TOKEN="letmein" ousefuldemos/tm129-robotics2020:latest

When you run the docker command, several things will happen:

  • first, docker will download the container image from DockerHub (this may take some time but only happens the first time you try to run the container);
  • then, docker will launch the container and a Jupyter notebook server will start running inside it.

When the container is running, go to localhost:8129 in your browser (if that doesn't work, try 127.0.0.1:8129) and you should see a running notebook server there.

Use the token letmein to access the server (you should only need to do this once).

Any files in the local TM129 directory on your host computer should appear in the notebooks folder in the notebook homepage directory listing.

Teaching Materials

The repository also contains drafts of the practical activity teaching materials. These materials are "unpublished" and ©The Open University, 2020; they are posted here purely to support commentary and review during development. The initial draft of the materials is essentially a recasting of the original materials and activities into a form that uses a new user environment (Jupyter notebooks) and new simulation environment (nbev3devsim, based on ev3devsim).

When starting the Docker container, if you mount the current working directory on host onto the /home/jovyan directory in the container, it will clobber all the files that were are the top level of this repo that are otherwise baked into the container.

However, some essential file from the top level of the repo directory are also stashed in the $CONDA_DIR/workfiles/recover directory.

Launch a notebook terminal and run the command:

cp -ir $CONDA_DIR/workfiles/recover/* /home/jovyan/

to recover the files into clobbered home directory. This files will then be place in your current working directory. (Omit the i flag if you do not want to be warned about overwriting any files.)

Open Computing Lab

This repo is being developed according to (emerging!) Open Computing Lab principles. The userguide provides generic instruction on using Open Computing Lab environments.