I'm info dumping some links about open-source robotics. The rabbit hole runs deep and this barely scratches the surface.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of these yet. Based on a cursory search and following links from the great Open-source robotics Wikipedia page.

Robotics simulation on Godot

• https://github.com/flynneva/godot_ros - Proof-of-concept integrating ROS2 (Robot Operating System) with Godot, for a 3D robot simulation environment. (Updated 8 months ago)

• https://github.com/nordstream3/Godot-4-ROS2-integration - A fork(?) of the above. The readme is clearer with visual examples of what it's meant for. (Updated 12 months ago)

• https://github.com/plaans/gobot-sim - A top-down 2D factory simulation of packages being processed by machines. (Updated 3 months ago)

• https://lab.nexedi.com/nexedi/godot-modbus-demo - Exposing a modbus interface to control simulated industrial components. (Updated 5 years ago.) Comes with a blog post which might be more recent (a year ago?).

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18408 - "Exploring Flexible Scenario Generation in Godot Simulator" about generating simulated physical scenes for testing computer-controlled cars. Write-up only with no code. (Submitted 9 months ago)

Robotic car simulation on Unreal Engine and Unity

• https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla - "CARLA is an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research." They mostly target Unreal Engine. Regularly updated and popular with 13k stars on GitHub.

• https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim - Microsoft and IAMAI collaborated (plus DARPA funding?) to create an open source simulation platform for both flying drones and autonomous cars. Targets Unreal Engine and experimentally Unity also. Soon being sunset and replaced with a new project confusingly named "Project AirSim."

• https://github.com/iamaisim/ProjectAirSim - The successor to AirSim. The GitHub shows it's only at version 0.1.1 though.

Robot Operating System (ROS2)

• https://github.com/ros2/ros2

• https://docs.ros.org/en/kilted/Tutorials.html - Tutorials beginning with TurtleSim, a top-down 2D turtle scene where you control turtles. Looks like ROS2 uses familiar network messaging patterns like Publish-Subscribe.

• https://vimeo.com/osrfoundation/videos/sort:date - Presentation videos. Looks like the Open Robotics foundation just completed a developers' conference in Japan two days ago. The presentations from ROSCon JP are Japanese-language-only. Next one is coming very soon this October in Singapore.

How to get started?

That's a lot of links. I'd first figure out what I want to do. Humanoid robots seem popular lately—like the Berkeley 3d printed robot—so it'd be interesting to start there, although it doesn't map cleanly onto the projects I linked. So maybe if I imagined a robot with a human torso and arms, but with wheels and car-like locomotion. Then I could use a combination of the car simulators and probably ROS2 to deal with the upper body components? Or maybe there is another solution for the torso and arms that is a more direct fit than ROS2? Maybe iRobot/Roomba has a better solution for the car-like locomotion at this small scale?

Anyone used these before and have a story to share? Anyone curious to try one out and report back? I plan to, but no idea on my schedule.

This isn’t really meant to be a hate post or “linux sucks” kind of thing, in fact I like Linux (EndeavourOS being my distro of choice). This post is more about the little things that nobody really talks about when comparing OS’s, but then you face them and they can be a dealbreaker or a pain in the neck.

This weekend I decided to try running CachyOS in my gaming desktop. For quick context, my desktop is dedicated to gaming, everything else I do on my laptop. The desktop is plugged to a 1080p 60hz monitor and a 4k 120hz TV (hz relevant for later), uses sunshine for streaming, and also Virtual Desktop for my meta quest.

So, I grab the USB and plug it into the PC. Turn it on and here comes the first issue: the background image appears and nothing else.

Well, my first suspicion due to a similar issue I had with ubuntu a decade ago, must be the Nvidia GPU causing issues. Without investigating further, I restarted the PC and used the legacy mode. The resolution was extremely low in my monitor, but it was manageable. Installed the thing and restarted.

Once the PC is back on, the login screen appears. I input the pass, enter and…. Exact same issue. Background image, no UI whatsoever.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time here, investigating the error. Checking the drivers, etc.

But long story short: the actual problem was that my monitor was the second screen, the TV was the primary. The desktop was outputting to both screens. The UI was on the TV.

I curse myself for not remembering that this may have been it, but in my defense:
1- the terminal commands that appear when turning on the OS appeared in my monitor
2- the legacy mode worked on my monitor
3- on windows, the OS is smart enough to figure out which screen is turned on, so I was used to it automatically outputting to the correct screen

Well, once I fixed that, here came the second (small) issue:
Scaling is broken.

Windows used to have this problem but nowadays, when you change screen Windows does a good job scaling things, despite some issues with some apps. At the very least, you won’t get blurry windows.

On KDE… Yeah. Blurry all around. I don’t have a habit of swapping screens mid session, so I could live with it.

Then came the third issue:
KDE is limited by the lower highest possible framerate in both screens. Meaning, on my TV, I was stuck with the 60hz because of my monitor

From what I found out, this is not exclusive to KDE and seems to be a problem with Nvidia. Regardless, for me it was a dealbreaker. In my case, Windows can use the respective framerate of each screen, while Linux can’t.

As I said, this is where I threw the towel and went back to windows. Which is really a pity because I really don’t like where Windows 11 is going, but it’s something I can live with as long it doesn’t get in the way between me and gaming.

Meanwhile Linux, because of these little things, introduced more issues than rewards for my use case, thus why I can’t jump to it on my desktop.