BOTA Driver Setup Guide

Prerequisites

1. Add user to dialout group (for serial port access):

   sudo usermod -a -G dialout $(whoami)

   Log out and back in for changes to take effect.

2. (Optional) Change sensor configuration

   If the sensor is only going to be used with USB select “Disabled - USB only” as Primary communication interface on the sensor configuration tool (requires chrome browser).

3. (Optional) Create environment setup script: Create set_ros_env.sh in your workspace root:

   export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=...
   export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=...
   export ROS_NETWORK_INTERFACE=...

Configure Hardware

The sensor config is baked into the image at build time. You must change serial_number and product_name in /ros2_ws/src/bota_driver_ros2_example/bota_config/bota_binary.json, and rebuild, or mount a custom config via a volume in docker-compose.yaml.

Run the Driver (Docker, integrated with the ecosystem)

This is the primary entrypoint. It builds the image on first run and brings the node up on ROS_DOMAIN_ID=100 with rmw_cyclonedds_cpp bound to the ecosystem's network interface, so the FT topics are visible to the rest of the host stack.

cd ~/repos/botasys_ft_sensor_ros2
ROS_DISTRO=jazzy docker compose up --build bota_ft_sensor

Overridable environment variables (see docker-compose.yaml for defaults):

• ROS_DISTRO (default jazzy)
• ROS_DOMAIN_ID (default 100)
• RMW_IMPLEMENTATION (default rmw_cyclonedds_cpp)
• NETWORK_INTERFACE (default enx607d0937fb24) — must match the active interface of the rest of the ecosystem
• BOTA_DEVICE (default /dev/ttyACM0)

Run the Driver (Pixi, local dev only)

For local experimentation without Docker:

pixi run -e jazzy setup     # clones + builds the driver into ros2_ws/
pixi run -e jazzy bota-run

Note: this path does not configure CycloneDDS or the ecosystem domain, so topics published this way may not be visible to the rest of the host stack.

Additional Resources

For more information, visit the BOTA Driver Python Example repository.