VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 21 2013 - 11:00:46 CDT

Tom,
  If you have it working well enough for the Phantom demos,
then you may be very close to being able to get VMD to work.

The next step is to compile VRPN against your Phantom drivers,
and then compile VMD against VRPN, and you're in business.

If you can get the VRPN server running with your phantom with any
of its test codes, then I can do a VMD build for you with the same
version of VRPN, and it should then work. I am out of town until
Monday but I can work on this with you after I get back. Let me
know if you can get VRPN compiled on your machine.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:52:17PM -0500, Thomas C. Bishop wrote:
> Here's info on how to get the PHANTOM omni devidce setup under linux.
> Thought I'd post it while I have it
>
> Haven't gotten to point of it w/ VMD yet but the PHantom Demos work.
>
> The Sensable manual I downnloaded is a bit out of date
> as the linux kernel does not have raw1394 modules.
> OpenHapticsAE_Linux_v3_0
> OpenHaptics_3.1_Academic_Edition
>
> The trick is to spoof raw1394 module s.t. the sensable drivers think
> they are loaded. Here's a work around from
>
> http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1750274.html
>
> If there are better solutions I'd love to know.
> Thanks
> TOm
>
> ****************************************
> quoting... http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1750274.html
>
> It is a rather ugly fix, but as I cannot modify "Open"Haptics it will
> have to do in my case. I've looked quite a lot around the web as well,
> and I can't find any other solution.
>
> After installing "Open"Haptics and the device drivers which SensAble
> provides (using dpkg) you will have to work your way around the
> dependency of raw1394. I am not really sure which steps ultimately made
> it work for me, but the following steps are necessary.
>
> 1. Spoof the /dev/raw1394 device
> 2. Create a dummy kernel node
>
> 1. To spoof the /dev/raw1394 device, simply use ln and hard link the
> /dev/fw0 (or some other fwX) by typing the following commands:
>
> sudo ln /dev/fw0 /dev/raw1394
> sudo chmod 0777 /dev/raw1394
>
> 2. As I believe "Open"Haptics checks if the raw1394 module is present
> during launch (using lsmod or similar), I created a kernel module that
> doesn't do anything at all called raw1394. This can be done by making
> two files: Makefile and raw1394.c
> These should be stored in the same folder and compiled using "make".
> When this is done, you will have a file called raw1394.ko which can be
> loaded using insmod.
>
> Makefile
>
>
> obj-m += raw1394.o
> all:
> make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) modules
> clean:
> make -C /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build M=$(PWD) clean
>
> raw1394.c
>
>
> #include <linux/module.h>
> #include <linux/kernel.h>
>
> int init_module(void)
> {
> printk(KERN_INFO "Loaded dummy raw1394 module\n");
> return 0;
> }
>
>
> Commands to compile and load module:
>
>
> make
> sudo insmod raw1394.ko
>
>
>
>
>
> On 03/19/2013 11:28 AM, Thomas C. Bishop wrote:
> >Dear VMD and Will Ray,
> >
> >are there any updates/developments w/r/to VMD and a Phantom Omni?
> >
> >Instead of having an actual dedicated windows machine does anyone have
> >experience with a Windows machine w/in VirtualBox inside the same server?
> >
> >I'm using Opensuse 12.4
> >
> >TOm
> >
> >
> >From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
> >Date: Sat Dec 01 2012 - 23:20:06 CST
> >
> > Next message: John Stone: "Re: cant open .car file"
> > Previous message: John Stone: "Re: unable to load cartoon
> >represention of my peptide"
> > In reply to: Ray, William: "Setting up a Phantom Omni for use with
> >VMD on CentOS 6"
> > Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [
> >attachment ]
> >
> >Hi,
> > We've never had the firewire drivers working well enough
> >under Linux to run the Phantom devices natively on a Linux
> >machine. Up to now, we have always run the Phantom devices
> >off of a Windows machine. We would then setup a VRPN server on
> >the Windows machine, and connect to it over the network from
> >our Linux/Windows/MacOS machines as needed. This wastes a windows
> >laptop on running the phantom, but it was very expedient and trouble
> >free for the most part. I don't have any particular advice about
> >getting the Phantom drivers working on Linux, from your description
> >it sounds like the Sensable people aren't working very hard on the
> >Linux support, so you might be better off just using a Windows machine,
> >unless the Sensable people know for sure that there's some particular
> >version of Linux that their current drivers have been tested on recently.
> >
> >Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> >On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 06:22:23PM +0000, Ray, William wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > We are working on setting up a Phantom Omni to use with VMD on a
> >CentOS 6 machine. We have confirmed that the Phantom Omni itself works
> >on Windows 7. We are still early in the set up process for CentOS, and
> >were wondering if anyone has any tips on setting it up?
> > >
> > > So far we have the PDD installed, and when we run
> >PHANToMConfiguration, the device's serial number is found. When we run
> >PHANToMTest, however, the application comes up, but we are not able to
> >do anything. Since the support at Sensable is fairly minimal for CentOS,
> >we have decided to move on to installing cmake and trying to set up
> >VRPN. Does anyone have any tips on anything to watch out for with the
> >VRPN set up, or on whether we should pursue getting PHANToMTest to
> >actually work?
> > >
> > > Thanks for any thoughts anyone might have on this!
> > > Will Ray 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/