Introduction
Using a virtual machine to run the demo application when evaluating the V1 radar sample is not recommended and can lead to issues with radar operation. We highly recommend that you install Ubuntu 20.04 natively on a laptop in order to test the radar, since this is the most stable method.
However, in the scenario that you cannot access a device to install Ubuntu 20.04, we provide this guide to run the demo on a virtual machine. We do not guarantee that it will work; however, the demo application ran successfully when testing with Ubuntu running in VMWare Workstation on a Windows 11 host machine.
VM Setup
In order to bypass the complexities of manually configuring the network on the host machine and VM (not detailed here), using a VM requires that you use an Ethernet to USB-C/USB-A adapter.
First, download and install VMWare Workstation Player on a Windows host machine: www.vmware.com/products/workstation-player/workstation-player-evaluation.html.
Download the Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) AMD64 ISO image: releases.ubuntu.com/focal.
Follow this guide to create the VM from the ISO image: robodev.blog/ros-installation-part-1-install-ubuntu-2004. We recommend using a 30 GB disk capacity, 16 GB of RAM, and 2 processor cores.
Continue to set up ROS Noetic and the demo software in the Ubuntu VM as detailed in the manual.
Attaching Radar to PC
Here, we assume that you have followed the manual up until the “Demo Setup” section. You should have a V1 board that is powered on and a VM running Ubuntu that is now fully set up.
When you connect the radar via Ethernet to your PC (note that you must use a USB-C/USB-A adapter), you will receive the following prompt from VMWare Workstation Player.
Select “Connect to a virtual machine” and the name of the VM (here, it is “Altos Ubuntu 64-bit 20.04.6”).
The VM should recognize the device, and it will now appear in the Ubuntu network settings. Continue to configure the network and start the demo as noted in the manual.
Known Issues
Here are some known problems when running the demo application in the VM.
3D Graphics Acceleration
If the VM receives data packets from the V1 sample but no point cloud appears (or if rviz crashes immediately after starting the demo application), you likely have an incorrect or incompatible graphics configuration.
You can verify that the VM receives data packets by looking at the terminal window spawned when starting the demo application; you should receive sequential outputs that appear such as:
Frame 7872: objectCnt is 428
If you instead receive:
recv failed (timeOut) -1
the VM is not receiving data packets. Please make a new forum post under the Support category, and we will assist you.
In the case where data packets are received but no point cloud displayed or rviz crashing immediately after starting the demo application (with an error such as segmentation fault or
*** stack smashing detected ***), you must disable 3D hardware acceleration in your VM.
Power off the VM and open settings under VM → Settings…
In the Virtual Machine Settings Panel, select Display. Uncheck the “Accelerate 3D graphics” option.
Power on the VM and launch the demo again. If you still receive the same issue, open a terminal and run the glxinfo command. In the output, you should see: direct rendering: Yes.
As a final option, before launching the demo application, run either of the following commands:
export OGRE_RTT_MODE="Copy"
or
export OGRE_RTT_MODE="FBO"
If you are still having issues, please make a post under the Support category.