Robot Control Library
Background Services

The librobotcontrol package sets up two systemd services which the user can enable/disable at will. Older BeagleBoard images have these services installed but disabled by default. Enable manually like any systemd service or with sudo dpkg-reconfigure librobotcontrol.

rc_battery_monitor service

This service runs in the background and illuminates the 4 battery monitor LEDs on the Robotics Cape and BeagleBone Blue based on the state of a 2-cell lithium battery connected to the white balance connector, or a 3 or 4 cell pack connected to the DC input jack.

If you wish to control those LEDs manually through the LED module, then please disable this service first to avoid conflicts.

robotcontrol service

This service does some preliminary startup checks on boot to ensure the hardware is configured correctly. A short log file of this process is written to /var/log/robotcontrol/startup_log.txt on boot.

After completing the startup checks, this service will then start any program the user as elected to run automatically on boot. If the user's startup program has a problem, closes, or doesn't exist then the librobotcontrol service will show up as failed when calling systemctl status robotcontrol. This allows the user to treat their own robot control program like a systemd service, starting and stopping it with systemctl. See the run on boot page for how to configure this startup program.