Overview

miracenter is a tool which runs a complete Framework with units, etc. In contrast to mira and miragui which just run a MIRA Framework, the miracenter additionally allows to:

visualize the data from channels
visualize the internal state of Authorities and Units
control the Authorities and Units by adjusting their properties
send RPC calls
play and record tapes
connect to other "remote" MIRA frameworks
and much more

In effect, miracenter offers full control to all MIRA runtime components on the local or remote and distributed systems. Developers usually use the tool for debugging their software components. Application designers and end users will be able to use it to monitor and control the computation network including the data that is transfered between the components.

Running miracenter

If you have the path to the binaries of your MIRA installation included in your PATH environment variable, you just need to type

miracenter MyConfigFile.xml

to launch a Framework together with 'MyConfigFile.xml'. Otherwise, you have to specify the full path to the miracenter binary:

/path/to/miraroot/bin/miracenter MyConfigFile.xml

Thereby the configuration files are used to configure the Framework including the executed units, etc.

Parameters

Since miracenter starts a Framework in the same way as mira - it just shows a graphical user interface - the same command line parameters as for mira and miragui can be used.

Launch

miracenter --help

or

miracenter -?

to see a full list of command line parameters and their explanation.

User Interface

The user interface of miracenter is based on the Eclipse IDE, so if you are familiar with Eclipse you will manage to use miracenter easily.

After launching miracenter, you will face the main window or workbench. The workbench contains a set of views and editor windows. Views usually provide information and allow to control editors or other components. Usually, the same view can be opened only once. Each view can be docked in different positions within the dock areas of the workbench window by dragging them using the mouse. Views can also be detached from the workbench or stacked with other views in a tabbed notebook.

In contrast, editor windows are placed within the editor area of the workbench. Moreover, an arbitrary number of editors can be open at once, but only one can be active at a time. Similar to views, editor windows can also be detached from the workbench.

TODO:

describe maximized editors, editors above maximized editors (with and without, border, compositing)
describe perspectives, etc

All Views and Editors are plugins of the miracenter. You can easily implement your own View or Editor. For more details see:

GUI Components Tutorials

Workspace and Perspectives

When you run miracenter the first time, you will discover a workspace with several empty perspectives. You can add/delete/edit perspectives via right click on the perspective tabs at the top right of the miracenter window. To actually visualize or manipulate the framework, each perspective can be organized individually. For this purpose, you can add Views to the active perspective via selecting Window / Show View from the main menu. You can save / load a workspace by selection of File in the main menu. When you start miracenter again, initially the last workspace is opened.

Views

In the following the available views are listed and described further below.

General

Information

Tape

Visualization

Authorities View

Lists all the authorities of the framework. In the future, it will be possible to drag authorities to a 2D Channel Visualization or 3D Channel Visualization to visualize the internal state of the authorities. Furthermore, the Properties View refers to the selected authority.

Capture View

Allows to capture images of the whole workspace or certain windows ... (implementation not finished yet)

Channels View

Lists all channels and information about these and allows to drag them to a 2D Channel Visualization, 3D Channel Visualization, Text Channel Visualization, Plot Channel Visualization or Recorder View for visualization or recording.

Properties View

Lists all properties (reflected members) of other views (if they support properties) and/or the authorities, which are selected within the Authorities View. The properties can be manipulated using this view.

RPC View

Lists all available services with their methods and allows to execute RPC calls and displays their results.

Thread Monitor View

Lists all threads and their CPU usage.

Player View

Allows to play channels from tapes.

Recorder View

Allows to record channels to tapes.

Tape Editor

A graphical editor to visualize and edit the content of tape files

2D Channel Visualization

2D Visualization of Channels (and in future Authorities). Multiple channels can be visualized in one view. The view's parameters can be manipulated by the Visualization Control View

3D Channel Visualization

3D Visualization of Channels (and in future Authorities). Multiple channels can be visualized in one view, where the pose of each visualization is defined by the target frame of this visualization view. The view's parameters can be manipulated by the Visualization Control View.

The 3D view provides some tools for navigating inside the 3D scene and for calling often used RPC calls:

Orbit:
- Use this tool to move the observer camera around in the scene.
  - Left mouse button pressed: Move the observer on a sphere, which is located in the center of the view.
  - Right mouse button pressed: Move the observers position parallel to the x-y-plane.
  - Shift + Right mouse button pressed: Move the observers position along the z-axis.
  - Middle mouse button pressed: Zoom in and out.
  - Mouse wheel: Zoom in and out.
Fly:
- Use this tool to look around any fly through the scene.
Template:
- Reserved for future usage.
Goal:
- This tool can be used for setting a goal pose (consisting of a position and an orientation) including variances, by doing the following steps:
  - Specify the position (x and y):
    - Simply click with the left mouse button in the map on the desired position. In this way a standard variance of 10cm is used.
      *OR*
    - Click in the map to select a position and move the mouse while holding the left mouse button to specify the variance. The variance is shown as a white circle around the selected position.
  - Specify the orientation (phi) (Red: x-axis, Green: y-axis):
    - Move the mouse around the selected position and click with the left mouse button when the desired orientation is reached. This way, a standard variance of Pi/4 is used.
      *OR*
    - Move the mouse around the selected position, click with the left mouse button when the desired orientation is reached and then move the mouse away from the selected position while holding the left mouse button. The variance gets bigger as farer the mouse is moved away from the selected position. The variance of the orientation is visualized as red/green triangles.
- A click with the right mouse button aborts the current tool operation.
- Internally, this tool uses the method setGoal of the interface INavigation. For more details, please refer to the Navigation toolbox.
Localize:
- This tool can be used to localize the robot in the 3D scene. It works in the same way as the Goal tool (described above).
- Internally, this tools uses the method setInitPose of the interface ILocalization.

Text Channel Visualization

Text Visualization of Channels (and in future Authorities). Multiple channels can be visualized in one view. The view's parameters can be manipulated by the Visualization Control View

Plot Channel Visualization

Plot Visualization of Channels (and in future Authorities). Multiple channels can be visualized in one view. The view's parameters can be manipulated by the Visualization Control View May be not available on your system if system requirements are not fully met.

Visualization Control View

Controls the currently selected 2D Channel Visualization, 3D Channel Visualization, Text Channel Visualization or Plot Channel Visualization. Allows to add/remove visualizations and to edit their properties.

Properties for 2D Channel Visualization

General Parameters

Update: Update interval in ms
Fixed Frame: The frame that denotes the world frame. Should be fixed and not moving
Camera Frame: The frame where all other frames are transformed to for displaying the data
Background Color: The view's background color
Scale Factor: The scale factor (zoom)

Properties for 3D Channel Visualization